Healthy Bytes

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30 million American kids are overweight – that’s 1 in 3.
In another 3 years (2010) if the trend holds – it will be 1 in 2.

With all these overweight kids, we’re now seeing a proliferation of adult diseases in kids too young to get a driver’s license – heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, sleep apnea.
Kids experiencing these lifestyle diseases 40-50 years earlier than their parents generation. And they’re being treated with made for adults pharmaceuticals, replete with side effects.

Here’s a few scary factoids:

A Harvard study found kids 10-15 years old who watched 5 hours of TV a day had a 500% (5 times) greater liklihood of being overweight than kids who watched 2 hours or less.

Every hour a day of TV correlates to 6 pounds of increased weight.

Another study found that kids over 15 who ate fast food 2 or more times a week gained 10 pounds.

For each sugar laden drink consumed by middle school kids a day, there was a 60% increase in the risk of obesity.

Looks like an extinction plan.

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I was watching CNN House Call this morning. One of the stories was about prescribing Adderall to overweight kids.
Adderall is an amphetamine approved for ADHD prescribing.

According to Wikipedia, the active ingredients are:
1/4 Dextroamphetamine Saccharate
1/4 Dextroamphetamine Sulfate
1/4 dl-amphetamine Aspartate (racemic amphetamine)
1/4 dl-amphetamin Sulfate (racemic amphetamine)

One of the side effects of Adderall is decreased appetite. Thus some docs are prescribing it for the “side effect” rather than the “effect”. This is what they call “off label” prescribing.
(other side effects include: sleep difficulty, headaches, aggression, abnormal thoughts/behaviors, mania, growth suppression).

So they featured one kid and his family – a “success story”. It was a dinner table scene and what was the kid drinking… diet Dr. Pepper.
Now, what’s in diet soda… primarily Aspartame (some brands are switching to Splenda).
What is Aspartame (Nutra Sweet)? L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine.
(Some of the side effects are: headaches, brain tumors, brain lesions, and lymphoma)

Aspartic acid – which is an amino acid – is also known as aspartate.
Now I’m not a chemistry whiz. And I haven’t dug deep. But I was tickled by the dl-amphetamine Aspartate ingredient in Adderall and the L-aspartic acid in aspartame.
I’m not sure if there is a functional difference between the two.

What I do know is that aspartame is an excitotoxin. To put it simply – it’s not good for your brain.
If you notice the side effects of both Aspartame and Adderall, you’ll see there are brain issues.

Additionally, artificial sweeteners tend to make you crave more sweet stuff and mess with your brains ability to signal satiety. (I’ve posted on this a few times).

Just a thought… rather than putting the overweight kid on a strong drug, clean up his diet.

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One of the side effects of ADHD drugs is suppressed appetite and weight loss.
Not wanting a let side effect to go to waste, some Docs are prescribing the drugs to teens for weight loss. And here I thought they didn’t really pay attention to side effects.

That would be known as an “off label” use meaning, that’s not what the drug was approved for, there are no studies using the drug for this purpose and such uses are not monitored.

Interesting how parents* have been arrested and their child literally taken away from them and subjected to court ordered harsh medical treatment they did not want and yet it’s ok to give an overweight kid ADHD drugs and a can of soda to gulp em down with.

* Three cases in the news last year:
1. Virginia 16 year old boy with Hodkins who didn’t want another round of chemo
2. Texas 13 year old girl with Hodkins who didn’t want to do radiation after she did chemo
3. Washington mother who didn’t want her 9 month old son to have kidney surgery

Weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass surgery, can lead to a vitamin deficiency that can cause memory loss and confusion, inability to coordinate movement, and other problems, according to a study published in the March 13, 2007, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The syndrome, called Wernicke encephalopathy, affects the brain and nervous system when the body doesn’t get enough vitamin B-1, or thiamine. It can also cause vision problems, such as rapid eye movements.

Weight loss surgery and brain decline

Bariatric and lap band surgeries are getting rather popular.
Post surgery, folks consume a very limited amount of calories. Essentially, you’re shrinking your stomach size to that of a two year old. Of course you haven’t shrunk your nutritional needs to that of a two year old.

A study published this week in the Journal of the American Academy of Neurology points out numerous folks are experiencing memory loss and confusion as well as muscle coordination problems and vision problems.

They are tying the symptoms to lack of nutrition for the brain and nervous system – mostly B vitamins.

There have been other reports as well regarding brain functionality after weight loss surgery.

It’s basically mal-nourishment, whether you’re talking about a skin draped over bones person in a third world country, or a post-surgery “fluffy” person. The body still requires nourishment to function and rebuild itself.

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In an apple versus pear comparison, the pear is by far the healthier option.
I’m not referring to fruit here, but rather to physical shape. Apple shape being wide through the belly. Pear shaped being wider through the hips.

What researchers have found is that not all fat is created equal. They’ve shown that ab fat has a high association with poor insulin response and inflammation.

In a study done back in 2004 at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, liposuction was used to remove about 20% of people’s total body fat mass. While that gave them different wardrobe options, there weren’t the expected metabolic benefits found with weight loss by diet and exercise.

Liposuction removes subcutaneous fat… fat right under the skin.
It does not remove visceral fat… fat that surrounds the organs. Those fat cells are more difficult (and dangerous) to get to.
Diet and exercise doesn’t remove fat cells – it shrinks them, with no apparent preference for subcutaneous versus visceral.

Back to the results… in a second phase, researchers studied the blood to determine if visceral fat was the problem, or a symptom. In this study, they took blood from obese patients going through gastric bypass surgery.

They showed visceral fat was secreting interleukin-6 (IL-6) – an inflammatory molecule – into portal vein blood. Portal vein blood had levels of IL-6 50% greater than blood at the periphery.

Increased levels of IL-6 correlated with C-reactive protein (CRP) which is an inflammatory substance.

Chronic inflammation is associated with insulin resistance, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis and other diseases.

So let’s look at a few things…
Sucking out the fat doesn’t remove the health consequences.
Manufacturers of statin drugs keep telling you to lower your cholesterol – by taking their drugs for the rest of your life. And yet, folks with low and “normal” cholesterol have heart attacks and congestive heart failure. Why – inflammation.

Assistant professor of medicine Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D.:

“Many years ago, atherosclerosis was thought to be related to lipids and to the excessive deposit of cholesterol in the arteries. Nowadays, it’s clear that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. There also is evidence that inflammation plays a role in cancer, and there is even evidence that it plays a role in aging. Someday we may learn that visceral fat is involved in those things, too.”

A lifetime of poor nutrition and lack of exercise isn’t going to be sucked away in a simple outpatient procedure or blasted away with a daily pharmaceutical regimen.