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Study concludes that obese kids will have Poor Quality of Life

by Dr. Jacob Mathew, Moderator, DietBuddy

Many of us worry about health and fitness after we are all grown up. Staying healthy, however, should be a lifelong concern. The good habits are picked when we are young. So, share some of these ideas with your kids.

We all should pay attention to our kids' lifestyle and help them lead a healthy lifestyle.

The following news item could be of interest in this regard.

db Moderator

Poor Quality of Life in Obese Kids

(Ivanhoe Newswire, January 5, 2005) -- The more overweight children are, the poorer quality of life they will have, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Royal Children’s Hospital and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia studied nearly 2,000 children. They measured health-related quality of life using a short survey completed by a parent and child self-report to assess the physical, emotional, social and academic functioning of the children.

About 75 percent of the children studied were not overweight; about 20 percent were overweight; and about 4 percent were obese.

Researchers found both the parent and child quality of life scores decreased as the children’s weight increased. The child and parent scores were similar and showed decreases in physical and social functioning for obese children.

Authors of the study write, “The decrease was small for overweight children but more marked for those who were obese. The new observations are less dramatic than the much lower scores reported for children attending tertiary clinics, but are consistent with those observed for adults.”

Researchers say both parents should help children make appropriate changes to improve their health and quality of life. “Our findings may explain why so few parents of overweight children express concern about their child’s weight, yet with a quarter of all children now overweight or obese, even a minor reduction in health-related quality of life at an individual level is still likely to have a major effect at a population level,” they conclude.

SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005;293:70-76

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