Killer Diseases Begin with Childhood Nutrition, Part 2

Growing Up Healthy
by Joan Lunden, Myron Winick, M.D.

(Page 2 of 3)

Stop Heart Disease in its Tracks

Our children may be overeating their way to heart disease. According to the American Heart Association, the increasing epidemic of obesity among children is setting them up for cardiovascular disease later in life. To prevent this from happening, they recommend that we do everything we can to stop our children from becoming obese as early as possible.

Do you know how a heart attack occurs? How about a stroke? Heart attacks occur when coronary arteries clog. Fat, traveling through the arteries, builds up and attaches to the coronary artery walls. The accumulation of fat creates fatty streaks, which change into plaque. Plaque creates clots in the artery that reduce the flow of blood to the heart. A stroke occurs when an artery that goes to the brain becomes clogged, or when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures.

We now know that too much dietary fat — particularly saturated fat and trans fats — and too much cholesterol, play a major role in the buildup of those thin, white fatty streaks that ultimately lead to heart attack and stroke. Since our children are now showing evidence of these fatty streaks as young as ten years old, it's essential that we cut down on fat.

Along with too much saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, an iron excess may also prove to be a risk factor for heart disease, particularly for our sons. Our bodies can use only a normal amount of iron. Iron that isn't used is stored as excess. We are now associating such excess iron with an increased risk of heart disease. Unlike our sons, after puberty, the risk for our daughters diminishes: when they begin to menstruate the excess iron is discharged monthly in blood. This may be one reason why coronary artery disease is less common in women (pre-menopausal) than men.

High Blood Pressure/Hypertension
— Bringing Down the Risk

To better understand how high blood pressure develops and leads to hypertension and heart disease you need look no further than salt and its effect on the body. Too much salt causes our kidneys to react. To excrete excess salt, the kidneys increase our body's blood pressure. Continued elevated blood pressure leads to hypertension, which is a major risk factor for coronary artery disease and stroke.

American children are showing increases in both weight and blood pressure levels. Right now, an estimated 10 to 15 percent of school-age children have high blood pressure for their age, and the numbers are rising. These percentages parallel the obesity epidemic and the increased consumption of salty snacks and fast foods in young children around the world.

Children aren't born with a taste for salt. That's right — it's actually an acquired taste. And the sad fact is that we Americans consume ten times as much salt as we need. It's in our frozen foods, our canned foods, our processed foods, our snack foods, and also on the dinner table. It's everywhere! So why not put those saltshakers away now and help our children avoid high blood pressure and a lifetime on expensive drugs with possible side effects?

Type II Diabetes — A Threat to All Our Children

Over the past twenty years, Type II diabetes has increased dramatically in both children and adults. That enormous increase has now been linked to childhood obesity. The lack of physical activity isn't helping either. Our kids are spending more than thirty-eight hours a week watching TV, playing video games, downloading music, or chatting with friends on computers — anything but exercising!

How does childhood obesity link to Type II diabetes? It's all about fat cells. Overweight children are not able to either produce or to utilize all the insulin they need to keep their bodies energized. Insulin must find its way inside all the cells of the body to do its work. Fat cells are the most difficult to penetrate, and an obese child has too many fat cells for insulin to work properly. To compensate, the pancreas begins to produce as much insulin as it can, but eventually the amount needed will remain inadequate and the symptoms of diabetes will appear.

In the past, this disease has typically shown up after the age of thirty. But the 2001 Obesity Statistics from the U.S. government tell us that one in four overweight children is already showing early signs of Type II diabetes, and that 60 percent of these children already have one risk factor for heart disease.

Although these new statistics are distressing, they also clarify what must be done to protect our children. We must help prevent our children from becoming obese! And if they're already obese, let's help them lose the excess fat and reverse the symptoms of Type II diabetes.

Cancer — A Deadly Disease With Childhood Roots

To all of us, cancer is perhaps the most frightening of diseases. If we thought that lessening our children's risk of developing cancer as adults was within our reach, which of us wouldn't do everything possible to make it happen? Well, we now know that by changing the foods we offer our children, we may be able to lower their risk potential for cancer.

There's no magic bullet, but we do have a fantastic opportunity to give our kids the best protection. The new research tells us that our best chance is an anticancer diet low in total fat, high in dietary fiber and in certain vitamins, all found in fruits and vegetables. In fact, if only one dietary change were to be initiated to reduce the risk of cancer, the best would be to eat a more colorful mix of fruits and vegetables like blueberries, pumpkin, mango, apricots, peaches, oranges, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, spinach, dark leafy greens, and watercress. These foods are low in calories, low in fat (particularly saturated fat), free of cholesterol, high in fiber and in beta-carotene (a form of vitamin A), vitamin C, and natural cancer-fighting compounds.

Osteoporosis — Bank Enough Bone for a Lifetime

Is there any parent among us who doesn't want to stay physically fit and active throughout our lives? And is there any parent who doesn't long for that same mobility for their children as they age? Of course — no one wants their children to experience hip or vertebrae fractures in the future.

Childhood is a unique period for preventing osteoporosis. It is the ideal time for building and storing reserves of good bone. From pregnancy to early adult life, more bone is being formed than is being lost. Subsequently, from our early thirties for women and early forties for men, more bone is being lost than deposited.

We've all heard over and over again that calcium is the key to building strong bones. That's why it's imperative that we give our children the maximum amount of calcium to protect them from bone loss as they age and instill in them the importance of exercise in building strong bones. This is especially important for our daughters, who are ten times more likely to suffer osteoporosis later in life than our sons. After menopause, bone loss increases again. If we haven't deposited good bone reserves in childhood, our daughters won't have enough bone to draw on for support and will end up with thin, weak, brittle bones — the hallmark of osteoporosis.

I hope you now have a clearer picture and a deeper understanding of that critical link between the foods we feed our children and their risk of developing chronic adult diseases.

The challenge doesn't have to be complicated. It's up to all of us to become proactive parents and dedicate ourselves to lowering our children's risk for these diseases. By making the necessary nutritional and lifestyle changes, it can be done.

I strongly believe that whether you're expecting a child, are the parent of a newborn, a toddler, a school-age child, or an adolescent, if they're under your guidance, then you still have the chance to offer them the gift of a healthy, disease-free life.

This is a great place to start!

Copyright © 2004 by Joan Lunden and Myron Winick, MD

About the Author

Joan Lunden was co-host of ABC's Good Morning America for nearly twenty years. A bestselling author, she hosts A&E's Behind Closed Doors and the Newborn Channel's Parenting Minutes. She lives in Connecticut.

Is the Williams Professor of Nutrition and Pediatrics (emeritus) at Columbia University and for more than fifteen years serves as Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia's Collage of Physicians and Surgeons. Chairman of the Task Force for the Study of Pediatric Antecedents of Adult Diseases of the Institute for Cancer Prevention (formerly the American Health Foundation), Dr. Winick lives in New York City.