It wasn’t all that long ago that obesity and all of its related problems were solely the problems of grown-ups. In the US, things have changed for the worse in the past few decades. In addition to having more overweight adults than ever, kids and teens are developing this condition earlier and earlier in life. For kids, the most obvious influences are going to be their parents but education and awareness are important too. The parents, though, are the ones who are responsible for offering the most guidance and being the most positive role models properly. Kids who suffer from obesity face almost immediate threats to both their physical and emotional well being. If you go beyond that you’ll be able to see that there are a lot of dangerous health risks that can and most likely will surface later on. For kids this is a terrible situation that is almost impossible to beat back and get over.

The child who is obese is on a crushing path heading right for awful health problems. One problem, for example, is fatty liver disease (which is just about the most common liver disease). Very many years ago people usually associated liver problems with alcoholism and sclerosis of the liver. Now, though, we understand that chronic obesity is a major factor in fatty liver disease. What will usually make the primary liver issues worse is that the metabolism of an obese person is terribly dysfunctional. Your liver helps things more by acting as the detoxifying agent to rid your body of anything that is not good for it. So there is just an incredible demand and load that is placed on the systems of kids and teens who are obese. Widespread research has proven that kids who suffer from obesity are far more likely to suffer from sleep apnea than kids who aren’t obese. This condition is alarming because it leads to the blocking of a child’s airway while he or she is sleeping. Kids who are overweight and obese are more likely to develop snoring problems but that’s a deceiving piece of data, according to researchers. The reason for that is the snoring is sometimes a hidden symptom of OSA, obstructive sleep apnea. The adenotonsillectomy is one possible solution to the problem of sleep apnea in children and teens who are obese.

Researchers are still not sure about a direct relationship between obesity and the early onset of puberty, and more so in girls than boys. However, there is a certain amount of common sense looking at what is known. For example, we know that kids who are obese and overweight grow faster and enter puberty earlier. It is still a situation, however, in which causality needs to be more definitely defined. While this is clearly not a serious threat to health as other obesity related medical conditions, there are certain implications that go along with an abnormally young age for the onset of puberty. Kids and young adults who suffer from this condition are often given the moniker “the walking wounded.” This is because obesity ravages both the body and the mind.

Uppingham School