Why Is Child Obesity an Important Health Problem in America Essay Example for Free

Why Is Child Obesity an consequential Health Problem in America EssayObesity is a chronic state of macrocosm all over cargo. Its a life threatening condition and current explore has shown that fleshiness is the leading cause for the change magnitude health threats that persons of the developed world face. Obesity increases a persons threat for contracting diabetes, strokes, heart puzzles, certain kinds of crabmeat etc. Whats worse is the over two thirds of the industrialized worlds population is suffering from obesity and thats putting them in greater health dangers. In recent years, policymakers and medical experts rich person expressed alarm about the ontogeny hassle of childhood obesity in the United States.While most agree that the issue deserves attention, consensus dissolves shut down to how to respond to the paradox. This belles-lettres review examines one approach to tr have childhood obesity medication. The paper compargons the effectiveness for adolesce nts of the alto sop upher two drugs approved by the Food and Drug disposition (FDA) for the long term treatment of obesity, sibutramine and orlistat. This interrogative sentence of pharmacological treatments for obesity points out the limitations of medication and suggests the need for a comprehensive solution that combines medical , social, behavioural, and political approaches to the complex task.Why Is Child Obesity an Important Health Problem in America? A Review of the literature According to researcher, Tyre (2004), In March 2004, U. S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona called attention to a health problem in the United States that, until recently, has been overlooked childhood obesity 15% child obesity rate constitutes an plaguey. Since the early 1980s that rate has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents. Now much than nine million children ar classified as weighty.While the traditional response to medical epiphytotic is to hunt for a vaccine or a cure-all p ill, childhood obesity has proven more elusive the lack of success of recent initiatives suggests that medication might not be the answer for the escalating problem. other reason children may be overweight is the fact that developing and more highly developed countries are eating more beef and the meat, especially in the United States, has growth hormones in it in decode amounts. The laws in the United States allow cattle to be slaughtered for meat within hours of having been fed growth hormones, sequence in Europe this is forbidden.Studies have shown that growth hormones create overweight children, with early development and growth spurts during pre-teen years. This literature review con boldnessrs whether the use of medication is a promising approach for solving the childhood obesity problem by responding to the following questions1. Is over eating an addiction that fucking lead up to obesity? 2. What are the impact confronting the Childhood Obesity Epidemic? 3. What are the implications of childhood obesity? 4. Is medicament Effective at Treating Childhood Obesity? 5. Is Medication safe for children? 6. Is Medication the Best Solution? Understanding the limitations of medical treatments for children highlights the complexity of the childhood obesity problem in the United States and underscores the need for physicians, advocacy collections, and policymakers to search for other solutions. Is over eating an addiction that can lead up to obesity? Many people tend to imagine that all obese people have to do to solve their problems is eat less and move more. Alcoholics, on the other hand, need treatment.But are the two disorders really all that different? Is it possible that eating in todays sweet and salty fast-food world is actually somewhat, well, addictive? Could people with a predilection to abusing alcohol and drugs just as easily abuse food? Researchers Berkowitz, Wadden, Tershakovec (2003) examined two large vistas of across the nation represen tative samples of American adults questioned about alcoholism in their families. Each allowd about 40,000 adults one survey was carried out in 1991 and 1992 the other was done a decade later, in 2001 and 2002. According to esearchers, Flegal,Carroll, Odgen, Johnson (2002), the people surveyed were asked whether a relative had been an alcoholic or problem drinker at any time in his/her life, a question repeated for several types of relative mother, father, brother, sister, half-sibling and children.Participants in addition reported their own weight and height, so physical structure mass index could be calculated (B. M. I. is a calculation of weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, and a result of 30 or more is considered obese). The first survey, from the early 1990s, put in no link between a family history of alcoholism and obesity. There was an almost perfect product between the B. M. I. distribution of people without a family history of alcoholism and people with a family history of alcoholism. In 2001 and 2002, adults with a family history of alcoholism were 30 to 40 percentage more likely to be obese than those with no alcoholism in the family. Women were at particularly high risk they were almost 50 percent more likely to be obese if there was family alcoholism than if there wasnt. (Men were 26 percent more likely to be obese. )Why the change over time?He says our so-called obesigenic, or obesity-inducing, food surroundings has changed in the decade between the two surveys. The most likely culprit, he said, is the nature of the food we eat, and its inclination of an orbit to appeal to the sorts of reward systems, which are the parts of the brain implicated in addiction. Other explanations for the increased obesity among relatives of alcoholics are possible, however. For example, it may be that people from families with alcoholism are more susceptible to stress generally, or to suffer from underlying depression that leads them to drink or overeat.No single gene is responsible for fashioning someone obese or alcoholic. But people who eat or drink excessively may share critical characteristics like lack of impulse control and the inability to stop once they get started, a sort of missing stop signal, he said. Stress is also implicated in twain(prenominal) behaviors. The notion of alcoholism be a disorder can be oversimplified. At some point, its a behavior and a choice. Its just that some people are more penetrable to the effect of that choice than others (Robinson Killen, 2004).Confronting the Childhood Obesity EpidemicAccording to researchers, Ogden, Carroll, Curtin (2009) in U. S. children and youth is an epidemic characterized by an unexpected and excess number of cases on a steady increase in recent decades. The epidemic is relatively new but widespread, and one that is disproportionately affecting those with the fewest resources to prevent it. Although it does not have the exotic nature or immedi ate mortality of severe acute respiratory syndrome, anthrax, or Ebola virus, it is harming a much ampleer cross section of our young people and may significantly undermine their health and social welfare finishedout their lives.Obesity can affect a childs health immediately through physical or psychological conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, steatohepatitis, depression, and stigma. Obesity can also affect a childs health in the longer term with additional illnesses that include arthritis, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Infectious disease epidemics require and usually receive immediate high-level attention, with resources invested to control the problem and prevent its recurrence. Childhood obesity must be treated with comparable urgency.As with other emergent health problems, our degree of knowledge and arsenal of effective interventions are quite limited. But we do not have the luxury of waiting to accumulate large bodies of evidence. Therefore, it behooves us to chart our course of action wisely based on what evidence we have drawing from our dealings with analogous problems and the outcomes of natural experiments and learn as we proceed. Complicating the process willing be the multiple causes and correlates of childhood obesity and the need for many concurrent actions and interventions.What be the Implications of Childhood Obesity? Obesity can be a devastating problem from both individualist and societal perspective. Obesity puts children at risk for a number of medical complications, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stop apnea, and orthopedic problems. Researchers have noted that obesity is often associated with psychological issues such as depression, anxiety, and binge eating (Lee, Blair, Jackson, 1999). Obesity also poses serious problems for a society struggling to cope with rising health alimony cost.The cost of treating obesity soon totals $117 billion per year a price, according to the surgeon general, second just to the cost of treating tobacco use (Willett Mason, 2002). And as the number of children who suffer from obesity grows, long-run costs will only increase. Is Medication Effective at Treating Childhood Obesity? The widening scope of the obesity problem has prompted medical professionals to rethink old conceptions of the disorder and its causes. As researchers Yanovski and Yanovski (2002) have explained obesity was once considered either a moral failing or evidence of underlying psychopathology (p. 92).But this view has shifted Many medical professionals now consider obesity a biomedical rather than a moral condition, influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Yanovski and Yanovski (2002) have further noted that the development of weight-loss medications in the early 1990s showed that obesity should be treated in the same manner as any other chronic disease through the long-term use of medication (p. 600). Researchers, Ebbeling, Pawlak, and Ludwig, (2002) researched for the right long-term medication has been complicated.Many of the drugs authorized by the food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the early 1990s proved to be a disappointment. both of the medications fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine were withdrawn from the market because of severe side effects (Yanovski Yanovski 2002 p. 592), and several others were classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as having the potential for abuse. Currently only two medications have been approved by the FDA for long-term treatment of obesity sibutramine (marketed as Meridia) and orlistat (marketed as Xenical).Sibutramine suppresses appetite by blocking the reuptake of the neurotransmitters serotonin and noradrenaline in the brain. Though the drug won FDA approval in 1998, experiments to test its effectiveness for younger patients came well later. In 2003, researchers Berkowitz, Wadden, Tershakovec, and Conquist released the first double-blind placebo study testing the effect of sibutramine on adolescents, aged 13-17, over a 12-month period. Is Medication Safe for Children?According to researchers, Willett Mason (2002) while modest weight loss has been documented for both medications, to individually one carries risks of certain side effects. Sibutramine has been observed to increase blood pressure and pulse rate. In 2002, a consumer group claimed that the medication was related to the deaths of 19 people and filed petition with the Department of Health and Human Services to banish the medication. The sibutramine study) noted elevated blood pressure as a side effect, and dosages had to be reduced or the medication discontinued in 19 of the 43 subjects in the first six months.The main side effects associated with orlistat were abdominal discomfort, oily spotting, fecal incontinence, and nausea. More serious for long-term health is the concern that orlistat, being a fat-blocker, would affect absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamin D. However, the study found that this side effect can be minimized or eliminated if patients take vitamin supplements two hours before or after administration of orlistat (p. 91). With close monitoring of patients taking the medication, many of the risks can be reduced. Conclusion, Is Medication the Best Solution?The treatments of childhood obesity raise the question of where medication is the best solution for the problem. The treatments have clear costs for individual patients, including tart side effects, little information about long-term use, and uncertainty that they will yield significant weight loss. In purely financial terms, the drugs cost more than $3 a day on bonny (Critser, 2003). In each of the clinical trials, use of medication was accompanied by an expensive regime of behavioral therapies, including counseling, nutritional education, fitness advising, and monitoring.As journalist Greg Critser (2003) noted in his book Fat Land, use of weight-loss drugs is marvelous to have an effect without p roper support system one that includes doctors, facilities, time, and money. For some, this level of care is prohibitively expensive. Addressing each of the above questions requires more than a doctor armed with a prescription pad it requires a broad mobilization not just of doctors and concerned parents but of educators, food industry executives, advertisers, and media representatives.The barrage of possible approaches to combating childhood obesity from scientific research to political lobbying indicates both the severity and the complexity of the problem. While none of the medications currently available is a miracle drug for curing the nations nine million obese children, research has illuminated some of the underlying factors that affect obesity and has shown the need for a comprehensive approach to the problem that includes behavioral, medical, social, and political change.