Increase in Child Obesity Rates Surprises Health Advocates

You may have thought all the alarm and concern raised in recent years that children are too heavy, on its own might have scaled back the problem, as parents and schools got the message and redoubled efforts to help their young charges avoid gaining too much weight.

After looking at childhood obesity rates in 2001, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy went back three years later and again examined the numbers from the state Department of Education’s Fittnessgram physical fitness test for fifth-, seventh- and ninth- graders.

The center’s original report was released in 2002. The update has just come out, and shows the rate of obesity actually increased by 6 percent in the state, with 28.1 percent of the youth surveyed now classified as overweight.

The report’s authors were surprised.

“We were, quite frankly, shocked by the findings that the epidemic of overweight children had gone up 6 percent in three years. We really thought that given all the information and education over the last three years that the tide may have turned, but that’s not the case,” said Dr. Harold Goldstein, director of the Center for Public Health Advocacy.

“The rates are continuing to rise and it’s a medical disaster.”

But when he thought about it, Goldstein said he probably shouldn’t have been surprised by the rising rates. After all, even though there was a lot of hubbub about overweight kids from 2001 to 2004, there wasn’t much in the way of concrete changes in the culture of food and exercise.

Saturday morning TV shows are still sponsored heavily by makers of sugary breakfast foods and snacks, supermarket checkout aisles are still designed to entice impulse (or bribery) buying of candy, and finding safe outdoor activities is still hard to do in many low- income, park-deprived areas.

“Everywhere children turn, they are bombarded with messages that undermine parents’ best efforts,” Goldstein said.

Actually, some things have changed. School sales of soda — a hot- button issue for the Center for Public Health Advocacy and similar groups — were banned in the Los Angeles Unified School District in January 2004, shortly before the survey data was collected.

The study’s results are broken down into the 80 individual Assembly districts, which provide a handy-sized geographic area to analyze trends, as well as some prompting for lawmakers to support healthy food-oriented legislation.

Locally, the 51st Assembly District — with Gardena, Inglewood and Hawthorne — has the highest rate of overweight children, with 33.5 percent considered to be overweight using the state education system’s criteria for factoring weight and height.

The 53rd district — beach cities, Torrance and Lomita — has the lowest rate in the local area with 24 percent.

The 55th, which includes Carson, is at 31.4 percent, and the 54th — the Palos Verdes Peninsula — is at 26.9 percent. Generally, the lower income areas have higher rates of overweight children. However, the 54th carries the distinction of experiencing one of the biggest gains statewide, a 15 percent increase since the 2001 figures.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is backing pending legislation that would restrict soda and “junk food” sales at schools statewide. Language in the bills declares that the state’s rising rates of childhood overweight and obesity are putting the population at risk for increasing rates of heart disease and diabetes.

Goldstein agrees with that assessment.

“We really consider this one of the most important public health issues facing this generation of children,” Goldstein said.

“If the trend continues, this generation could be the first in all time to have a lower life expectancy than their parents.”

While his center lobbies for state and national policy changes, Goldstein said there are things parents can do at home: encourage their children to eat healthier foods, and whenever possible turn off the TV set.

For more information, go to www.publichealthadvocacy.org/ index1.html.

Acupuncture aids with fibromyalgia pain

Sufferers of the chronic muscle pain fibromyalgia found relief with acupuncture, a study by the Mayo Clinic has found.

Patients said their pain, as well as anxiety and fatigue, were significantly reduced by the needle treatments.

Researchers felt that the findings showed acupuncture could be used to complement more traditional treatments.

The study centered on 50 sufferers of moderate to severe fibromyalgia.

Half were given six acupuncture treatments over two to three weeks, and the other half were given simulated acupuncture. The study participants were not told which group they were in, and were not able to reliably guess which one, researchers said.

Researchers recommend that patients interested in acupuncture talk to their doctors about finding a qualified acupuncturist. More information is available at the Web site for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, http://nccam.nih.gov.

Send comments to lee.peterson@dailybreeze.com or to Medical Notebook, Daily Breeze, 5215 Torrance Blvd., Torrance, CA 90503- 4077.