Parents often express concerns about their children's extra weight and may even dismiss it, believing that it's a phase they will eventually outgrow. But what does the science say about this issue? In this podcast episode, we'll dive into the insights from a fascinating scientific study .
This study followed thousands of children from their early years into adulthood to investigate the long-term consequences of childhood weight and whether kids truly "outgrow" extra weight.
Here is the study I will present: Prediction of Adult Class II/III Obesity from Childhood BMI: The i3C Consortium Int J Obes (Lond). 2020 May
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 .
Parents often express concerns about their children's extra weight and may even dismiss it, believing that it's a phase they will eventually outgrow. But what does the science say about this issue? In this podcast episode, we'll dive into the insights from a fascinating scientific study .
This study followed thousands of children from their early years into adulthood to investigate the long-term consequences of childhood weight and whether kids truly "outgrow" extra weight.
Here is the study I will present: Prediction of Adult Class II/III Obesity from Childhood BMI: The i3C Consortium Int J Obes (Lond). 2020 May
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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Speaker 2:
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.
Speaker 1:
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. I hope you are all having a wonderful week, and I decided to talk to you about a research study that was done a few years back but addressed a very important question. I often hear parents telling me that well, my child outgrow the extra weight, or in different social gatherings, when there are some children that they have some extra weight, you often hear that, oh, don't worry about it, kids will grow and the fat will go away, or this is just the normal part of the growth and as they get taller, then you don't need to worry about it. And I have to say that, yes, that can be true in some cases, particularly if the extra weight is not too much. But oftentimes, if we don't do anything about the behaviors that have led to this extra weight and we just think, oh, let's ignore it for now for this reason or that reason, and time just passes by and things don't get better, and when is it time to do something about it, and should we just watch and wait or do something about it? And it's always a question and discussion that family and cars all families to have with their kids.
Speaker 1:
But I wanted to bring some scientific evidence that actually investigated that topic and looked at what is the percentage of kids that actually outgrow the extra weight and what happens to those kids when they become adults. And this is a very difficult study to do because it requires that you follow kids for years and years, and that makes it very difficult to study, and that's why I believe this is one of the greatest studies that was published, and I wanted to talk to you because that's exactly what they did. They followed kids that they had seen in years ago, in the 1970s and 80s, and they followed them for many years until they became adults, and then they looked at what happened to those kids. So the actual title of this manuscript is prediction of adult class two and three obesity from childhood BMI the I3C consortium. So this was published in 2020 in the National Journal of Obesity and it was international study. It had data not just from United States but all around the world. So, as I mentioned, they put together large epidemiologic cohorts from United States, from Finland, the different studies, australia and they did that because they wanted to collect as much data as possible to make this a strong study. So this ended up having a database of over 40,000 kids that participated in the 1970s and 1980. And of those 40,000 kids, of course some are going to be lost to follow up, but there were 12,000 of them that they were seen again as a follow up when they were adults. So that's still a huge number of people that they were analyzed. Now what they did is they used only people that they have at least one height and weight measurement to calculate the body mass index when they were kids, the BMI, and at least the same person had also at least one point of adult BMI when they were more than 24 years of age, and so they needed at least two data, one as a child and one as an adult above the age of 24. So again, if you don't know what BMI is, I invite you to go listen to episode one where I talk more about that. But in Simplters, bmi is a simple tool researchers use to estimate whether there has been improvement or worsening of the weight overall in kids and adults and whether they are becoming less or more closer to a healthier weight.
Speaker 1:
So the way that categorized the kids that they were enrolled, as I said, they had at least 12,000 approximately participants, that they had data also in adults. So when these adults were kids, they categorized them as having a normal weight or a BMI that was less than the 85th percentile. They were overweight, which means their BMI was between the 85th and the 95th percentile. They were classified as having obesity whether their BMI was between the 95th and the 120th percentile, or they had severe obesity if the BMI was above the 120th of percentile of the 95th percentile. So and then, similarly, when they were adults, they categorized them in different categories of BMI according to their weight. So they were kids, I'm sorry. They were adults that they were classified as having normal weight where the body mass index was less than 25. They were overweight where the body mass index was between 25 and 30. They were classified as having class one obesity where the body mass index was between 30 and 35, or class two or three obesity where the body mass index was more than 35. And class two and three obesity is really what we call severe obesity, and it is the obesity that is more closely related to complications, as adults like, and this is why they have the different categories to kind of give the severity of the overweight problem.
Speaker 1:
So what did they found? So let me tell you, the cohort included a total of 12,142 participants. Of them, approximately 44% were male and 85% of the population was white, and the median age for the kids that were studied in the beginning was 14. There was an arrange between 11 and 16 years of age and 82% of the kids at the beginning had normal weight, 11% were overweight, 5% had obesity and there was also 2% that had severe obesity. Now, when they looked at the adult BMI, adult bonimas index, the average, the median age was 33 years of age and there was approximately a fallout of 21 years as a median fallout from the childhood measurement and the range was between 18 and 27 years. Those are a lot of years. So the maximum adult weight status was that 41% had actually normal weight of the adults, 32% were overweight, 15% had class 1 obesity and 12% had class 2 and 3 obesity.
Speaker 1:
And then when they looked at the trajectory of who developed the class 2 and 3 obesity, adult obesity, which is the most severe form, they found that the severe obesity in adults developed in 6% of those that had normal weight. As children, developed in 29% of the kids that they were overweight, developed in 56% of children that had obesity and developed in 80% of children that had severe obesity. So these numbers are extremely high. What it tells us is that if kids have a normal weight during childhood, in that study, 6% of them had severe obesity as adults. But if the kids had severe obesity or even obesity normal obesity as kids, then 56% of them developed class 2 and 3 obesity and 80% of those with severe obesity developed class 2 and 3 adult obesity. On the other hand, there are also approximately 38% of adults that had class 2 and 3 obesity and had normal weight as children.
Speaker 1:
And another striking thing from this study was that, as I mentioned, it was an international study with data not only from the United States but also from other parts of the world. The world found that, compared with the cohorts in the United States, the cohorts that were outside the United States had lower rates of childhood obesity it was less than 3% versus 10% and they also had lower class 2 and 3 rates of obesity in adults it was 6% in international studies versus 16% in United States studies. And, of course, the data that they reported back in the 70s and 80s for kids that when they were at their baseline studies that they were overweight or they had simple obesity or severe obesity are significantly lower than the rates of overweight and the rates of obesity that we see today. So back in the 70s 80s, in those data there were only 11% that were overweight, 5% that they were obese and they had obesity and 2% that had severe obesity. And what happens today?
Speaker 1:
Based on the data by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of obesity in children approaches 20% for children and adolescents, and it tends to be higher, actually 22.2% among those who are 12 to 19 years of age. So over the years we can see a significant increase in the prevalence of obesity in children and teenagers. From about 7% total of those kids that they were, that they had obesity and severe obesity, now we are to 20%. So there is a significant trend towards more weight gain in kids nowadays compared to what it used to be 30 years ago. The problem seems to be worse in the United States compared to other parts of the world, and the same is true also for the adult data.
Speaker 1:
And what this study has proven is that there was a big percentage of kids that had extra weight as teenagers and as children and that weight gain persisted into their adult years.
Speaker 1:
And, yes, kids are less likely than adults to experience the detrimental consequences of having extra weight.
Speaker 1:
There's like higher risk for strokes and heart disease and all those things then high blood pressure that kids do not get.
Speaker 1:
However, if they don't change anything in their lifestyle, if nothing is done to address the issue, it is more likely that this problem will continue in adulthood and that this will put them at higher risk for metabolic complications, because they are more likely to develop class 2 and class 3 obesity also as adults. So instead of ignoring the data, instead of turning our head the other way and saying, oh, there is nothing wrong with all this extra weight and as the kids grow, the problem will be resolved, I encourage you to discuss as a family the ways that you can improve the behaviors that have led to this extra weight, and it's not going to happen overnight, but it can happen. So that's all I had to say for this episode. I hope it was helpful and I hope you all work as a family to improve that, and I hope that someday we will be able to reverse this picture and have more healthy children and have more healthy adults. Take care of your health. Bye.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of lifestyle and weight loss for teens.