Childhood Obesity, Health Complications and Preventive Healthcare
Obesity is not an ailment, but it makes the body prone to a host of health complications, including heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis, breathing problems, such as sleep apnea, among others. Being a responsible parent, it’s your responsibility to protect your kid from obesity and bless him or her with a healthy life.
What is Obesity?
Obesity is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories burnt or expended. Most of the obesity related health problems fall in the category of lifestyle diseases. They have become prevalent with the social and economic development.
Prevalence of Childhood Obesity
According to WHO (World Health Organization), under the age of five, there were over 41 million overweight children by 2016. Before we jump into preventive healthcare measures to curb the ill-effects of obesity, it’s important to understand the root causes.
What are the Causes of Obesity?
Childhood overweight and obesity are attributable to a number of factors including:
- Increased intake of energy-dense foods like processed foods that are high in fat and sugars but low in vitamins, minerals and other healthy micronutrients;
- Decreased physical activity levels due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of recreation time
- Increasing urbanization and comfortable lifestyle
- Governmental policies
- Lack of awareness
Preventive Healthcare to Contain Childhood Obesity
- Leaving things that are beyond your scope, here are a few things that you can adopt to give your kid a healthy life.
- Knowledge is power – so start from the bottom. Make your kid informed about the consequences of obesity, healthy lifestyle and healthy diet. Discourage them to eat foods rich in fat and sugars. But be humble while you do so. Give him or her alternative to processed food when they develop craving for the same.
- Go with him or her for a jogging in the morning. Encourage him or her to spend less time with video games and more time with friends in a nearby park. The physical activities will help your kid to burn the extra calories, drive away toxic elements and establish a balanced metabolism.
- Encourage your kid to take stairs rather than taking an elevator or lift when you go out
- Limit restaurant eating, especially fast-food restaurants
- If you have an infant, breastfeed him or her adequately
Hope you found the information useful. Let’s pledge to create a world free from the crisis of obesity so that we don’t end up counting unhealthy statistics on every World Obesity Day (11 October).