Originally published August 30 2005
Kids' chance of becoming obese increases with watching more TV, study finds
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Children who vegetate in front of the television have an added 50 percent chance of being overweight in high school, a recent study on Science Daily found.
Some minority reports even contend strategies born of the pursuit of childhood health serve as the starting gate for the runaway rate of persistent problems, which have leaped 113 percent in 30 years.
Where a child lives apparently matters as much as how, with a Wisconsin study of 37,500 rural families, published in the Nov. 13, 2004, issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, showing significantly lower rates of asthma or wheezing in tots on the farm than in their city- and country-dwelling counterparts.
Personal habits, even of relatives long gone, come into play, with grandma's smoking during pregnancy doubling the risk of childhood asthma two generations down the road and a youngster's long-term exposure to second-hand smoke boosting the odds of breast cancer setting in before menopause.
On the other side of the couch, a Dec. 7, 2004, study, published in Public Library of Science Medicine, raised the nightmarish possibility that lack of sleep can make a child dangerously fat.
Newfound child-rearing styles may be at least partly responsible for the skyrocketing rates of the most common childhood infection, wrought by a microbe called respiratory syncytial virus, which can lead to bronchiolitis and pneumonia, said Dr. Alan Cohen, a pediatric pulmonologist specializing in infectious disease.
"As children are not mature enough to take responsibility for lack of physical activity and then eating more calories than required for their sedentary lifestyle, adults (particularly their parents and teachers, but also lawmakers and school boards) must take the responsibility for sedentary children overeating," urged Frank Booth, a biomedical researcher at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
"This results in the increasing allergy, asthma, diabetes and cancer rates in children, which are happening in modern nations where suppressive treatment of inflammatory illnesses is the rule."
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