A lot of teens and children suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder ie ADHD. It is estimated that around 10% of children have ADHD. Some of them take medications for it, others dont.
In this episode, I present a research study that investigated the risk to be overweight in children and adolescents in relation to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and medication use for ADHD.
The details of this study are : Overweight in Children and Adolescents in Relation to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Results From a National Sample Molly E. Waring, MA, Kate L. Lapane, PhD PEDIATRICS Volume 122, Number 1, July 2008
I hope you find this episode helpful. If you do, please share it on your social media account, with your friends and family. Someone else might need to hear this message and benefit from it.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
A lot of teens and children suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder ie ADHD. It is estimated that around 10% of children have ADHD. Some of them take medications for it, others dont.
In this episode, I present a research study that investigated the risk to be overweight in children and adolescents in relation to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and medication use for ADHD.
The details of this study are : Overweight in Children and Adolescents in Relation to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Results From a National Sample Molly E. Waring, MA, Kate L. Lapane, PhD PEDIATRICS Volume 122, Number 1, July 2008
I hope you find this episode helpful. If you do, please share it on your social media account, with your friends and family. Someone else might need to hear this message and benefit from it.
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
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This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgary.
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Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, and on today's episode, I will talk to you about the relationship between attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, which is ADHD, and risk for overweight in children and teenagers. I decided to talk about this topic because ADHD is one common condition, is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders that we see in children and a lot of kids have this and it's really a combination of hyperactivity and inattention, or it could be less hyperactivity and more inattention or the other way around. So it doesn't apply to all children, but approximately more or less like 10% of the kids may have this and it requires symptoms that you see both in school and at home and there are specific criteria and if you have any concerns that maybe your child has ADHD, you can talk more about it with your child's pediatrician. Now there is a lot of scientific research on this topic, because children that have ADHD have some impulsive behaviors and they can have some inattention overall. That can also affect their eating behaviors and their eating patterns. So there have been a lot of studies that show there has been an association between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in kids and risk for being overweight. Now this subject becomes a little more complicated when those kids start taking ADHD medications. So these medications can improve their symptoms of hyperactivity and attention, can improve school performance, but they also have some side effects in terms of appetite regulation. So some of these kids again, not all of these kids can have decreased appetite after they start these medications. However, they also have better control of these impulsive behaviors. And again, there are several ADHD medications out there and not all medications that are used to treat ADHD have the same effects on appetite. There are also medications that to treat ADHD that also have effects on how the kids grow. So you may see that some of these kids stop growing after they are on ADHD and that can also have an effect on the risk for being overweight. So it is not one size fits all. There are many implications to it, but what I wanted to achieve by this podcast episode is just to give you an overview and just some points to think about and maybe prompt you to have further discussion with your pediatrician or your teenager if you think that, potentially, adhd could be a problem in your teenager's health.
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So the study I'm going to present today is called overweight in children and adolescents in relation to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder results from a national sample. It was published in the Journal of Pediatrics in 2008. It was done by Molly Waring and Dr Kate LePen in Brown Medical School Department of Community Health. So what these researchers did, they actually used data from a huge sample of children. They actually used data from 62,887 children and teenagers between the ages of 5 to 17 years. That they were part of a big national survey of children's health between 2003 and 2004. So the big advantage and the main strength of this particular study was that it had a huge number of children that they use in their database. So this was a survey. So, basically, the researchers ask children, their parents, whether their child has ever received a diagnosis of ADHD and whether, and those that they answered yes, they also ask them whether the kids were using ADHD medications. Now they also collected data again on their height and weight to calculate the bonima syntax, which once again, is a tool that researchers used to figure out whether a child is normal weight, underweight or overweight or in the obese category. So, again, if you want to learn more about what is bonima syntax and how much weight does your kid need to lose to be in a healthy weight. Go back and listen to episode one of this podcast where I go more into details on how to figure out a normal BMI in child. So they collected this researcher's data on the bonima syntax. They collected data on whether the kids have ADHD and, if they did, whether they were taking medications or not. They also, of course, collected data on their race, on their gender, whether they were male or female, and they also collected data on whether they had depression or anxiety.
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One quick note about this study is that the definition they used to characterize children that they were overweight was a little different than what is typically used. So typically, a normal child has a normal BMI if it is between the fifth and the 85th percentile, and the 85th and the 95th percentile is what typically we characterize as overweight, and above the 95th percentile is what we characterize typically as being in the obesity category. So, however, in this particular research, they categorized kids between the 85th and 95th percentile as being at risk for overweight and those being more than 95th as considered overweight. So they did not really have a category named classically obese category. Just a quick note, because terminology is important when we are talking about scientific research.
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So let's dive into what their researchers found. So, as I mentioned, they had more than 60,000 of kids and of those, of course, majority did not have a DHT. 57,204 kids did not have a DHT, but there were 5,680 kids that had ADHD. So the total frequency, let's say, of ADHD in this sample group was approximately 9%. So, and of those kids that were taking medications, there was approximately 57.2% of the kids that had ADHD were on medications, and majority of them, 72%, were male. One thing that striked a big difference was the percentage of depression and anxiety between those that had ADHD versus those that did not have ADHD. They found 3.1% depression and anxiety symptoms in those that didn't have ADHD, compared to 28% of those that had ADHD.
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And now let's look at, when it comes to weight, what they found those that 56.7% of children and adolescents with ADHD had normal weight. However, 6.7% were underweight, 15.6% were at risk of overweight, meaning their body mass index was between 85th and 95th percentile, and 21% were overweight, or what would classify typically as in the obese category, having a body mass index above the 95th percentile. And so they did another thing they also looked more into the kids that had ADHD that were taking medications versus the kids that were not taking medications. And what they found was that the children that were taking medications were at higher risk to be underweight, to have weight that was body mass index less than the fifth percentile, compared to children and adolescents that did not have ADHD. Now, also, they found that the children that had ADHD and were not using medications were 1.5 times more likely to have problems with their weight and have a body mass index more than a 95, compared with the children and adolescents that did not have ADHD. Again, kids that had ADHD and were not taking medications were 1.5 times more likely to have an unhealthy weight compared to the kids that did not have ADHD. So this is just one of the studies that have shown this relationship between ADHD, not medicated and risk for overweight.
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And, as I mentioned, why does this happen? Well, there are several theories. One is that, as I mentioned, this impulsivity, this behavior that characterized unmedicated kids and also adults that have ADHD, is make it more difficult also for them to control their behavior around food. So, in other words, they may eat without paying attention to what they are eating. Also, they may have more episodes of binge eating, which also has been associated to lead to obesity. So binge episodes are really episodes where you lose control and you start eating again. It's like a behavioral pattern.
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And also sometimes people that have ADHD can also have problems with their sleep and, as I have mentioned before, sleep plays a huge role in regulation of appetite and hormones.
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And you can go back and listen to episode four, where I talk about how sleeping more can help teens lose weight, and also episode 16, how does poor sleep affect teens' preference for sweets and desserts?
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So, to summarize, this is one of the studies that was done in a big representative sample in the US population, a big survey that indicated that kids that have problems with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may be at a higher risk to have an unhealthy weight. So I highly recommend that if you have a child that may have ADHD, or you suspect that the child may have ADHD, to discuss this further with your pediatrician. Or if you already have a child that has been diagnosed with ADHD but they have not been consistently taking their medications and their struggle with their weight, then this is something to discuss with them again and maybe that will help improve their compliance with their medications. I hope this was helpful to you. If you find it also useful. Please share this episode with your friends and family so we can spread the message and more people can benefit from it. That's all I had for you for today and I'll talk to you soon.
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Take care If you enjoyed listening to this podcast. I invite you to come check out the Lift program. It's Dr Gorgary's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteanscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.