Childhood Obesity–An Significant Health Problem

The problems of obesity among children are taking place like epidemic all around the world, especially in India. Obesity has defined increased by 20% by ideal weight for age, sex and height of a child. A child is said to be overweight when there is an excess of   gathered fat in the subcutaneous cells and other parts of body.

 But today the childhood obesity has become a problem of major public health problem. According to the analyses it is found that over 40 millions overweight children below the age of 5 and form that 35 millions of them are form developing countries and especially form urban areas.

 The WHO designed a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health at the appeal for of WHO states in May 2004. This is preventive strategy to deal with non-communicable disease and their harmful effects.  The main cause of childhood obesity is an extreme change in the food habit like intake of energy-dense, nutrient poor foods and lack of physical activity all these factor contributes to increase   the level of calories in the body. Along with that obesity brings various health issues.

  Why is childhood obesity such an urgent problem?

The reason that everyone get worried about childhood obesity is it stays through adulthood and increase the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, breathing problems and cardio-vascular problems. According to studies it is found that in India nearly 16% of children are overweight   and for that 31% of children have chance of dropping in this category. It is these statistics that step significant alert bells

 Following are some common fallouts of being an obese child include:

·         Obese child is often teased and bothered which result to low self-esteem.

·         The teasing and low self esteem further cause the problem of depression and other psychological problems.

·         Obese people mostly suffer   the problem of breathing. Many times they experience this problem while walking.

·         Finding difficulty in breathing makes that child to avoid exercising which causes the terrible circle.

According to research it is found that obesity during childhood can cause to following morbidity, even if this problem does not success into adulthood. Children who are obese are more vulnerable to a wide range of illnesses like diabetic issues and cardio-vascular illnesses, obstructive rest apnoea, orthopaedic and other psychosocial issues.

Determining obesity:

There are various ways of determining whether your kid falls in the overweight or obese category and following are some of them:

 Weight-to-age chart:

The weight categories are determined by planning weight in a weight-to-age chart. There are separate chart for boy and girls and from 2 to 20 years of age.

Triceps skin fold measurement:

In this the skin fold is measured by using calipers and tape. This is a one of the most accurate method for measuring childhood obesity. While these tests can be performed on various parts of the body, they are most commonly performed by calculating the midpoint of the arms.

Along with this the word overweight is used when the weight is more than 110% of stander weight or the skin fold becomes more than 30mm.