High Blood Pressure, Obesity & Diabetes Rampant

Story first appeared in Reuters.

Health data released on Wednesday provided the clearest evidence to date of the spread of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease from developed nations to poorer regions such as Africa, as lifestyles and diets there change. Medical Supplies such as Blood Pressure Units and Doctor Bags are scarce in these poorer regions, and result in lowered awareness of health problems that do exist.

The United Nations data showed one in three adults worldwide has raised blood pressure - the cause of around half of all deaths from stroke and heart disease - and the condition affects almost half the adult population in some countries in Africa.

In its annual report on global health, the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) also said one in 10 adults worldwide has diabetes, an illness that costs billions of dollars to treat and puts sufferers at risk of heart disease, kidney failure and blindness.

While the average global prevalence of diabetes is around 10 percent, the report said, up to a third of the population in some Pacific Island countries have the condition.

Chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer are often thought of as illnesses which primarily affect people in wealthy nations, where high fat diets, alcohol consumption and smoking are major health risks.

But the WHO says almost 80 percent of deaths from such diseases now occur in low- and middle-income countries.

In Africa, rising smoking rates, a shift towards Western- style diets and less exercise mean chronic or so-called non-communicable diseases are rising rapidly and are expected to surpass other diseases as the most common killers by 2020.

This report is further evidence of the dramatic increase in the conditions that trigger heart disease and other chronic illnesses, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. In some African countries, as much as half the adult population has high blood pressure.

This year's WHO statistical report was the first to include data from all 194 member countries on the percentage of men and women with high blood pressure, or hypertension, and with raised blood sugar levels, a symptom of diabetes.

This report does not examine the causes behind the rising or falling numbers, but seeks to give a snapshot of major diseases and health risks affecting the global population.

In wealthy countries, widespread diagnosis and treatment with low-cost drugs have significantly reduced average blood pressure readings across populations - and this has contributed to a reduction in deaths from heart disease, the WHO said.

But in Africa, more than 40 percent -- and in some places up to 50 percent - of adults in many countries are estimated to have high blood pressure.

Most of these people remain undiagnosed, the report said, and yet many could be treated with inexpensive medicines - an intervention that would cut the risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke.

Obesity is another major issue, the WHO said, with data showing rates of obesity doubling in every region of the world between 1980 and 2008.

Today, half a billion people - or 12 percent of the world's population - are considered obese.

The highest obesity levels are in the Americas, where 26 percent of adults are obese, and the lowest are in south east Asia, at 3 percent of adults.

The report found that women in all parts of the world are more likely to be obese than men, and are therefore at greater risk of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

The WHO's World Health Statistics report is published annually and contains data from 194 countries on a range of health indicators including life expectancy, illnesses and deaths from various diseases, health services, treatments, and risk factors or behaviors that affect health.

World Health Statistics 2012 is available at: here .

Other key trends identified in the report include:

* Maternal deaths:

- In 20 years, the number of maternal deaths has dropped from more than 540,000 in 1990 to less than 290,000 in 2010 - a decline of 47 percent. A third of these deaths were in just two countries - India with 20 percent of the global total, and Nigeria with 14 percent.

* Child deaths:

- Data from 2000 to 2010 show the world has made significant progress in reducing child deaths, cutting them from almost 10 million under-fives in 2000 to 7.6 million in 2010. Falls in numbers of deaths from diarrheal disease and measles have been particularly striking, the WHO said.

* Death registration:

- Only 34 countries - representing 15 percent of the world's population - produce high-quality cause-of-death data. In low and middle-income countries, fewer than 10 percent of deaths are registered.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

For information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

Obesity Rates Keep Rising, Troubling Health Officials

NY Times

 

Americans are continuing to get fatter and fatter, with obesity rates reaching 30 percent or more in nine states last year, as opposed to only three states in 2007, health officials reported on Tuesday.

The increases mean that 2.4 million more people became obese from 2007 to 2009, bringing the total to 72.5 million, or 26.7 percent of the population. The numbers are part of a continuing and ominous trend.

But the rates are probably underestimates because they are based on a phone survey in which 400,000 participants were asked their weight and height instead of having it measured by someone else, and people have a notorious tendency to describe themselves as taller and lighter than they really are.

“Over the past several decades, obesity has increased faster than anyone could have imagined it would,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued a report on the prevalence of obesity. Obesity rates have doubled in adults and tripled in children in recent decades, Dr. Frieden said.

If the numbers keep going up, he added, “more people will get sick and die from the complications of obesity, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.”

The report estimates the medical costs of obesity to be as high as $147 billion a year, and notes that “past efforts and investments to prevent and control obesity have not been adequate.”

Researchers blame the usual suspects: too little exercise and too much of the wrong kind of food, which means not enough fruits and vegetables and too many high-calorie meals full of sugar and fat, like French fries, soda and other sweet drinks. Children do not get enough exercise during the school day; Dr. Frieden noted that even in gym classes, students are active for only about a third of the time.

A 5-foot-4-inch woman is obese if she weighs 174 pounds, as is a 5-foot-10-inch man who weights 209 or more, according to the disease centers. Both would have a body-mass index, or BMI, of 30; that index is calculated from height and weight, and scores of 30 or over are defined as obese.

The nine states with obesity rates of 30 percent or more are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. The highest rate, 34.4 percent, was in Mississippi.

People over 50 had higher rates of obesity than those who were younger. The aging of the population may account for some of the general increase in obesity, but not all of it, said Dr. Heidi Blanck, chief of the disease centers’ obesity branch of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity.

Non-Hispanic black women had the highest obesity rate, 41.9 percent. Over all, blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to be obese, and the more education people had, the less likely they were to be heavy.

Only Colorado and Washington, D.C., had obesity rates under 20 percent. Researchers are not sure why. Dr. William Dietz, director of the nutrition, physical activity and obesity division, said that Colorado had spent money from a state lottery on biking and walking trails and that many people were using them. The state seems to have “a culture of physical activity,” he said.

Dr. Dietz said the relatively low prevalence of obesity in Washington was harder to explain, particularly because the area has a large black population.

He said one explanation may be that many residents ride the subway; studies have shown that compared with people who drive, those who use public transportation tend to be thinner because it involves more walking. In addition, Dr. Dietz said, there is evidence of above-average fruit and vegetable consumption, and higher rates of breast-feeding, both of which are linked to lower rates of obesity.

Oregon Has Lowest Rate of Childhood Obesity

Associated Press

 

What's the magic in Oregon that keeps kids lean? It's a mystery health officials would like to solve as they admit all states are failing — by a mile — to meet federal goals for childhood obesity.

Oregon has the nation's lowest rate of hefty kids, according to a new government study, which found big gaps between regions and ballooning obesity rates in many states from 2003 to 2007.

More than 16 percent of American children ages 10 to 17 years were not just overweight, but obese, in 2007. That's a 10 percent rise from 2003. Mississippi topped the nation with more than a fifth of its kids obese.

Oregon was the star, with the lowest rate of obesity — defined as body mass index in the 95th percentile or above — at just under 10 percent. And Oregon was the only state whose childhood obesity fell significantly from 2003 to 2007.

Even the best states fell short. The federal Healthy People 2010 initiative set a childhood obesity goal of 5 percent. Only Wyoming girls came close to that, according to the study appearing in May's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"You've got such wide differences at the geographic level, which means there is potential to further reduce obesity," said lead author Gopal Singh, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

What works? It's unclear how much states can overcome the effects of poverty, race and family history — all of which have complex links to obesity.

Black and Hispanic young people in the study were twice as likely as whites to be overweight or obese, even when the researchers took into account other risk factors like inactivity and poverty.

Oregon is 90 percent white. It also has a high rate of breast-feeding, and some research suggests that protects against obesity.

Oregon law sets nutrition standards in schools and requires chain restaurants to provide nutritional information on request. Those steps, taken recently, wouldn't have shown up in the new study's results, but may reflect Oregon's inherent interest in health.

The figures for this analysis came from a representative telephone survey of parents who gave information about their children. Figures for about 47,000 children were analyzed for 2003 and about 44,000 children for 2007. That's not as accurate as a government survey that weighs and measures children. Data from that suggest childhood obesity rates nationwide may be starting to stabilize.

In a separate paper based on the same data, Singh found that a child living in a neighborhood with unsafe surroundings, poor housing and no access to sidewalks, parks and recreation centers had 20 to 60 percent higher odds of being obese or overweight.

Experts blame the rise in childhood obesity on fast food, neighborhoods without sidewalks, television, video games, schools neglecting physical education and a host of other societal changes, said Dr. Joe Thompson, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity.

Now, lawmakers must move the obesity numbers in the right direction to save future medical costs, if for no other reason, Thompson said.

High Cholesterol Puts 1 of 5 Teens at Risk for Heart Disease

The Washington Post

One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.

A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.

Previous studies had indicated that unhealthy cholesterol levels, once a condition thought isolated to the middle-aged and elderly, were increasingly becoming a problem among the young, but the new data document the scope of the threat on a national level.

"This is the future of America," said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who heads the American Heart Association's Nutrition Committee. "These data really confirm the seriousness of our obesity epidemic. This really is an urgent call for health-care providers and families to take this issue seriously."

Earlier research found that the obesity epidemic has been accompanied by an increase in a host of health problems in youths that were previously found mostly among adults, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. The new data detail the obesity's effect on cholesterol levels, which can increase the risk for a variety of illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease.

"The current epidemic of childhood obesity makes this a matter of significant and urgent concern," said Ashleigh May, an epidemic intelligence service officer with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's division for heart disease and stroke prevention, who led the analysis.

Although the latest government data suggest that the obesity epidemic might be leveling off after increasing for decades, at least one-third of youths are overweight or obese, and the heaviest boys continue to get heavier.

"People are worried that this generation is going to grow up to have more cardiovascular disease than the current generation," said Denise Simons-Morton of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "This problem is poised to negate all of the advances we've made in cardiovascular health."

In the new study, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers analyzed data collected from 3,125 youths through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is conducted every two years.

According to data from surveys conducted between 1999 and 2006, 20.3 percent had abnormal "blood lipid" levels, which includes low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or the "good cholesterol"; high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the "bad cholesterol"; and high levels of triglycerides, which can also clog arteries.

The percentage of teens with an abnormal blood lipid level varied by weight, ranging from 14.2 percent of those whose weight was normal to 22.3 percent among those who were overweight to 42.9 percent among those who were obese.

The findings support a 2008 recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that children and adolescents get blood tests to see whether they need to be treated for abnormal lipid levels if they are at risk for heart disease because of a family history of high blood cholesterol or early heart disease or if they are at risk because they smoke, have high blood pressure or diabetes or are overweight.

Federal Panel Urges Obesity Screening for Kids Ages 6 and Up

Business Week

A federal panel of health experts has issued new recommendations encouraging U.S. doctors to screen children aged 6 and older for obesity, and to offer them a referral to intensive weight management programs when necessary.

The recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) update those issued in 2005. At that time, the group said there was insufficient evidence to recommend routine obesity screening in children.

However, "since 2005, a series of randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that there is effective therapy, so we felt compelled to change the recommendations," said the UPSTF panel chair Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health in Denver.

"This is an encouraging message. There's hope for successful treatment, and we hope that parents will ask their pediatrician if their child needs intervention," said Calonge.

He said it's better to address the problem as early as possible in childhood instead of waiting until your child is grown.

"Once you become an overweight adult, it's more difficult to change your behavior," Colange said. "We do believe that childhood behaviors can be changed, and investing in changing these behaviors in kids is an investment that can pay off lifelong."

The new recommendations will be published in the February issue of Pediatrics, and are available online on Jan. 18 on the Pediatrics Web site.

Although recent statistics suggest that the rate of childhood obesity may be leveling off, one out of every six U.S. children is still obese, according data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics released last Wednesday.

The new recommendations now urge doctors to screen all children between 6 and 18 years of age for obesity. Screening should be done using height and weight measurements used to calculate body mass index (BMI), and findings should be compared to other children of the same sex and age. Kids whose BMI is over the 95th percentile for their gender and age are considered obese.

For children or teens who meet the definition of obesity, the task force recommends that doctors refer children and teens to intensive weight-management programs. Such programs should include more than 25 hours of contact with the child or teen over the first six months, and include three components:

    * Counseling for weight loss
    * A physical activity program or counseling on physical activity
    * Behavioral management counseling, such as teaching goal-setting and self-monitoring behaviors

In an editorial in the same issue of the journal, Dr. Sandra Hassink, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' board of directors, wrote that the current USPSTF report is "significant because it provides evidence that obesity treatment can be effective and beyond the immediate intervention." However, she also wrote that the recommendation fell short because it should have included younger children, from age 2 and up.

Another concern is that there may not be enough weight-management treatment programs available for all the children who meet the task force's threshold for obesity.

"The recommendation is that any program for children should be at least 25 hours over six months, and it's not easy to find programs that are 25 hours in duration," explained Dr. Goutham Rao, clinical director of the Weight Management and Wellness Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

"Very intense programs like this are usually very expensive and private-pay, and they may take in few kids," he said.

Calonge said that at least for now, there may be a shortage of programs. But, he said, as more children are referred, and more insurers start reimbursing for the treatment, more programs should become available. He pointed out that when mammograms were first recommended, few centers were available to address this need, but that hospitals and private companies quickly filled the gap.

Rao agreed that more programs will likely become available, and said that new ways to help children change their behaviors may be developed. At his own center, they've recently developed on online weight-loss program where children keep daily food logs and have email contact with a dietician.

And, despite the potential shortage of treatment programs, Rao said, these recommendations "are a major step in the right direction. The longer you wait to address obesity, the more habits are entrenched. The younger children are, the easier it is to make changes."