Childhood Obesity

If you take a look at the picture of the 70 classes, we generally see two or at most three obese children per class. Today, one in five children – or about five per class – is obese or has a significant overweight.

 
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that young obese have a quality of life significantly lower than other children. As part of the study, we interviewed children aged 5 to 18 who were staying at Children’s Hospital and Health Center in San Diego on various aspects of their lives as their social interactions and sense of well-being. Obese children were given a grade average of 20% less than thinner children. In fact, their scores were lower at all levels: physical, emotional, social and academic.

Childhood obesity not only affects quality of life and self esteem. Obese children face many health problems. Their blood pressure and cholesterol levels are higher than in children of normal weight, which increases their risk of later stroke (stroke) or heart disease. There is also a growing number of teenagers and even children are developing the type 2 diabetes, a disease believed to be, almost exclusively affected adults. These children may suffer from diabetic complications such as blindness, kidney failure and heart disease as early as the thirties and forties.

A real trap
Why the new generations are they more slender as before? Part of the problem is that children are bombarded with conflicting messages: one of the fast food culture that idolizes thinness, sedentary teenagers who play computer games where heroes strive thin and agile, the parents who excel in many areas but are unable to resolve weight problems of their children and governments that promote physical activity among children while cutting programs in physical education at school.

I understand this dichotomy. I know how it can be difficult to feel pressure from all sides and I am able to say how children can be cruel to their classmates obese, since I myself was a fat child. It was not easy. When I look at my picture in the 5th year, I feel enormous compassion for this little version of myself whose smile betrays the sadness. There was another child who suffered from overweight in my class, but obviously I was the fat.

Even if I lived a happy childhood, I tend to suffer from anxiety and I discovered that food could soothe me. It was not unusual for me to eat an entire row of cookies and even angry. Unfortunately, my sweet tooth was not accompanied by a great passion for physical activity. I was kind of reading rather than playing sports. The addition of these factors soon had a disastrous effect on my body. I understand now why my mother felt the need to hide the biscuits.

I tell my story because it illustrates how a child who has experienced great trauma or abuse or which has no physical abnormality may come to suffer from overweight. Even children are relatively happy and “normal” may fall into the trap. I am finally free of my obesity, not without difficulty, by indulging in physical activity, eating less fast food and following a psychotherapy that helped me solve my anxiety problems. Today, I am an adult of normal size that does not seem too suffer the consequences of childhood obesity.

I was lucky. Most of the children remain obese in adulthood. Overweight children ages 6 to 50% more likely to be obese in adulthood, and this percentage rises with age. I have not forgotten obesity provided. As psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I deal particularly obese adults who suffer from emotional disorders. Many of these patients also have diabetes, heart disease and other disorders related to obesity. And I’m looking more and more for children. I help prevent this burden for future generations.