Obese kids as young as six could show signs of heart problems which could lead to more dangerous problems down the road. According to the new study some kids as young as five showed elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. Click below to read more.
Obese kids — even as early as age 6 — can start showing changes to their heart muscles that could lead to problems later, a new review of previously published studies shows. And some obese kids had elevated blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar at age 5.
This international study, published in the journal BMJ, combined the results of 63 studies on nearly 50,000 school-aged kids from 23 countries, making it one of the largest reviews of its kind to date. The researchers compared the data linking obesity in kids and risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
What they found was alarming. It gives obese kids a head start on developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes, said the lead study author, Claire Friedemann, a doctoral student in the Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
The authors estimated that if obese kids continued to have high blood pressure as adults, their risk for heart attack and stroke would be 30 to 40 percent higher than that of their normal-weight peers.
Worldwide, emergency rooms are already starting to see patients with heart attacks and strokes at younger ages, said Dr. Richard J. Deckelbaum, professor of nutrition, pediatrics, and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, who was not involved in the study.
