The lifestyle of the young is not good for the heart

The trend is disturbing. More and more children and young people are having cardiovascular problems. And the causes can be traced to unhealthy lifestyles.

Lack of proper nutrition

Project EAT, a study conducted by the University of Minnesota looked at 2,500 teenage girls over a 5-year period. Their findings show that 62.7% of female teens engage in unhealthy weight control strategies which include taking diet pills, laxatives, drugs that induce vomiting, as well as regularly skipping meals. The use of diet pills is especially popular. Ironically, these weight control behaviour can actually produce the opposite results. Girls who engage in such strategies are 3 times more likely to be overweight. This creates a vicious cycle of dieting, weight gain and eating disorders.

Lack of exercise

How many hours do your children in front of a screen - be it a TV screen, a computer screen or any other game console? Canadian researcher Dr. Ian Michael Janssen tells Reuters that adolescents nowadays “spend more hours daily in front of a screen than they do in a classroom in a given year.” This translates to lack of physical activity that leads to rising rates of obesity among adolescents. It is estimated that about 50% of Canadian children aged 5 to 17 years old do not get enough exercise. 26% of these children are overweight or obese. Excess weight and obesity are risk factors for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Lack of sleep

In this study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers found a link between poor sleep quality and shorter sleep duration in teens and elevated blood pressure. Poor sleep quality or low sleep efficiency is defined as having “trouble falling to sleep at night or who wake up too early.”

The study looked at 238 adolescents (123 boys and 115 girls) ages 13 to 16 years old. Data on sleep habits and blood pressure were collected. Adolescents with less than 85% sleep efficiency had nearly three times the likelihood of having elevated high blood pressure.

Researchers say the culprit is technology present in bedrooms, be it in the form of phones, music, computers and other multimedia gadgets.

Childhood hypertension shouldn’t be underestimated, ignored or taken for granted. The likelihood of it developing to a full blown adult hypertension and then a serious cardiovascular disease is very high.

The study authors recommend:

“Adolescents need nine hours of sleep. Parents should optimize sleep quality for their family with regular sleep and wake times and bedrooms should be kept quiet, dark and conducive to sleep.”

 

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Diet Pills - Pros and Cons

Wouldn’t everyone love to stop worrying about dieting? Just take a pill once a day and forget about it. The pounds just melt off. Well, nutritional science isn’t quite there, yet. But it is making strides. However, anyone considering their use should be aware of both the risks and the potential benefits.

Pharmaceutical companies have taken two basic approaches to weight loss pills: those that stimulate and those that block. Stimulate what? Block what?

Appetite Suppression

In the first category are diet pills that work on the centers of the brain to stimulate the central nervous system. Several years ago these were variants of amphetamine, popularly known as ’speed’. The basic idea was to stimulate the dieter, which had the ’side effect’ of suppressing appetite.

The idea is sound. Eat less and your odds of losing weight are higher. The basic equation of dieting, no matter what method is chosen, remains the same: more calories consumed than used leads to weight gain. Consume fewer calories than you burn and the body will naturally shed pounds.

But, as with any drug, there are real side effects. Speed can produce heart palpitations, insomnia, diarrhea and lowered sexual function. In extreme cases, it may produce psychotic episodes. Over time, even the ability to depress appetite generally fades. Once the effects of amphetamine became more widely recognized, its use was discontinued.

A more contemporary prescription diet pill in this category is phentermine. It works by stimulating the hypothalamus, a gland that controls certain neurotransmitters associated with appetite. But it also plays a role in the sleep cycle, so sleeplessness can result. Still it is generally safe for short term use and the side effects are much less severe. Over a few weeks time, the desired appetite suppression is likely to fade.

Fat Blockage

The second category of weight loss pill uses an entirely different approach to eating and digestion. Here, there’s no attempt to regulate how much food is consumed, only how many calories are retained. Since every digested fat gram yields 9 calories, it is ‘energy dense’. So, removing fat from the system can help reduce the number of available calories.

Orlistat (marketed under the brand name Xenical) is a prescription diet pill that does just that. It operates by altering the body’s efficiency for absorbing fat, causing more of it to be eliminated in feces. The popular non-prescription drug, Alli, is the same drug at a lower dosage.

But, these too have side effects. Stools tend to be oily (a result of the added fat) and defecation is more likely to be spontaneous. That means it’s possible to lose control of the bowels and eliminate at undesired moments.

Summary

For many, the side effects of diet pills are well worth the benefits they give. Many users have tried a number of diet plans and find they don’t work well enough or require too much willpower. Others simply prefer to spend less time thinking about meal plans, carb to fat ratios or total calories consumed. A pill helps them diet with greater ease.

As with any approach to dieting, it’s wise to consult with your physician first before selecting a weight loss pill.