It's all over the news today. Kids should have their cholesterol tested and even begin taking statins as early as eight years old. The American Academy of Pediatrics has made it clear---the apparent epidemic of childhood obesity is putting millions of children at risk of developing heart disease and diabetes and other conditions. From the Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal , major news outlets jumped on the story. It was breaking healthcare news, and the true meaning of these reports is sobering.
So, if one out of four---or even one out of three---American children is overweight or potentially obese, what does this say about our society? If many children have physical education only once a week, what message are we sending to our children about how we value exercise and fitness? When more and more foods are filled with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other additives that enhance flavor and increase caloric content, what are we saying about how we value our children's health?
While I am anxious about giving statins to 8-year-olds (since there is no clinical data proving that these drugs are safe for children in the long term), we also must consider what it could mean to our society when people in their twenties and thirties begin to develop severe coronary artery disease and suffer MI's long before they should. We must also consider the cost to society in lost wages and productivity, increased disability, and increased burden on tax-payers as our citizens become sicker when they are younger. Early-onset diabetes and heart disease is expensive, and while we can't be sure of the safety of these drugs in children, we also don't want to see our children stricken with chronic disease, disabled before they reach their productive adult years.
That said, jumping to pharmaceutical intervention should ultimately, in my mind, be a last resort. Dietary changes, exercise, and lifestyle changes must be urged before a child is given a medication that he or she may then need to take for many decades to come, with no notion of how these drugs may affect the liver and other organs over time. Children cannot make these changes alone, and it is, after all, their parents who buy the groceries and cook the meals.
Cultural pressures, the media, advertisements, and the poor nutritional value of many processed foods all make feeding children well a difficult task. Children want to eat what they see on TV and what they see their peers eating, thus parents are caught between cultural and societal norms, the media, and children who don't know better. Many parents also eat poorly and are themselves clueless about nutrition, thus changing children's diets and lifestyles is even more difficult than it might seem.
These findings and recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics should be a wake-up call for American parents and healthcare providers. But I venture a guess that this issue will slowly fade from the headlines, only to emerge when yet another study confirms that Americans and their children are even less healthy than ever before.
The news today was troubling, and I can only surmise that it will have to get considerably worse before Americans wake up. Let's just hope they wake up soon.
