The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Getting young couch potatoes to be a sport

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Kerala - Kochi

Getting young couch potatoes to be a sport

K.P.M. Basheer

District has a high density of diabetics

A weighty issue: Obesity among schoolchildren is a cause for concern.

KOCHI: A campaign against obesity in schoolchildren has just been launched in Ernakulam district with a view to keeping children from catching lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart ailments.

Launched by the Rotary International with support from the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP), the campaign aims to educate schoolchildren, their parents and teachers on the risks of overweight and encourage children to go out and play games. This is in view of the fact that television and computers have spawn a generation of overweight adolescents (ages 10 to 19), who have very little physical activity and who take in more calories than their bodies burn each day.

Childhood obesity is now a universal urban phenomenon and a big concern of public health authorities worldwide, but in Ernakulam district, peoples’ health profile calls for certain preventive steps, doctors say. The district, which is home to more urban population than any other district in the State, has a very high density of diabetic people and a high incidence of heart diseases. Overweight, which is often a direct outcome of lack of physical activity and wrong eating habits, is a major cause of diabetes and heart ailments.

“A 2004-05 study showed that 17 per cent of the population in the district are diabetic,” Dr. K.V. Beena, district programme manager of NRHM, told The Hindu. “This is a really an alarming situation and we need to take preventive steps.”

Dr. Sekhara Warrier, a Kochi-based preventive cardiologist and chairman of the childhood obesity prevention programme of Rotary District 3201, pointed out that incidence of heart disease was much higher in Kerala than other States and Ernakulam’s heart condition was even worse. He said that the spurt in blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol in children in recent years should be an eye-opener to the parents. A sedentary, physically inactive life coupled with consumption of high-cholesterol and high-calorie junk food was the villain.

“Children these days do not go out and play,” Dr. Warrier said.

“They love to stay indoors watching television and playing games on the computer.” This has made them dull, overweight and prone to diseases. The young couch potatoes, whose blood gather high cholesterol and blood sugar, face the risk of becoming diabetic and are prone to heart diseases when they grow up, he warned.

In the West, there are organisations of parents whose children are overweight as well as government agencies tasked with battling adolescent obesity. Blogs and websites (example: www.myoverweightchild.com) offer tips to parents. Recently, the American Academy of Paediatrics suggested giving statins, a cholesterol-lowering drug, to young children and also called for large-scale cholesterol testing of children as young as two years of age to forestall diseases.

In India, Dr. Warrier noted, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar are, in the public mind, associated with adults. But the fact is that these risks could hit even schoolchildren and hence they needed to take preventive steps. Preventing overweight, by eating right and becoming physically active, can, to a large extent, forestall such risks, Dr. Beena said.

Eating food containing less fat, sugar and salt and more fruits and vegetables is a good beginning to a balanced diet. Children should be asked to keep off carbonated drinks, fried chips and snacks.

Though there are other factors such as genetics, lack of physical activity and consumption of high-fat, high-calorie foods are the main causes for overweight, which is generally defined as having an extra one-fifth of one’s normal weight.

“Get the children go out and play some game, at least for an hour a day,” she said. And, for this, parents and teachers should be educated on the need of physical activity for children. This is what exactly the childhood obesity prevention programme, whose motto is ‘Fit Not Fat’, aimed to do, Dr. Beena added.

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