[헬스코리아뉴스 / 이대용] Recently, due to Corona 19,’children’s obesity’ is on the rise due to irregular lifestyle habits as children’s external activities that are already less physically active have decreased. Of course, this is not a phenomenon that has been concentrated only recently.
According to the statistics of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the number of children and adolescents who received hospital care for obesity under the age of 20 has more than doubled in the last four years from 1837 in 2015 to 3812 in 2019. In addition, in 2015, 11.3% of all obese patients were under the age of 20, whereas in 2019, the proportion of obesity among children and adolescents is increasing to 16.3%. In this situation, it is believed that the rate of increase is getting more serious as Corona 19 overlaps.
Before Corona 19, obesity was a chronic disease, but the WHO also said that obesity is a new epidemic that is widespread around the world.
Obesity in children and adolescents does not end with just gaining weight. In the future, it can cause various adult diseases.
In fact, between 2015 and 2019, the number of diabetic patients under the age of 20 increased by about 24% from 9335 to 10,1571, and hypertension increased by 38% from 4610 to 6363. Hyperlipidemia also increased by 32% from 10,047 to 14,590.
During this period, the number of pediatric fatty liver patients also increased 37.4% from 9482 in 2015 to 13,029, and the number of patients diagnosed with cirrhosis in childhood and adolescents also increased by about 5%.
When treating obese children and adolescents, various complications can be identified. The so-called fatty liver, which is widely referred to as fatty liver, is relatively common, and when uncontrolled, liver fibrosis or cirrhosis may progress.
There are also cases of blood sugar abnormalities and diabetes. Hyperlipidemia, sleep apnea, snoring, and joint disorders are also complications found in childhood obesity.
Obesity in children and adolescents is suspected of being associated with precocious puberty as well as various adult diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure from childhood. Due to the psychologically sensitive characteristics of children and adolescents, adjustments are necessary because they can affect self-esteem, bullying, and academic performance in social and school life.
Obesity in the days when there wasn’t enough to eat would tell you that the supply of nutrition was okay, but today’s obesity, which is rich in food, is an excess of nutrition and intake of food that makes you gain weight, so you must control it.
Growing children should not starve for obesity management, but should be careful to differentiate between the so-called traffic light diet and eat.
Green foods such as cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and broccoli can be eaten as much as you want, and yellow foods such as general meals, rice, fish, meat, soup, milk, and noodles are foods that can be eaten as much as the amount provided for a meal. It is the red foods such as fast food that need to be adjusted, and the foods that need to be cut, not reduced.
When I was doing an outpatient treatment related to obesity, I said,’My child doesn’t eat vegetables. There are a lot of people saying,’I don’t eat vegetables and I gain weight, right?’, but to some extent, it may be wrong. It is not important to simply eat a lot of vegetables and fruits, but it is more important to eat half a regular meal a day, and to refrain from red foods such as instant and fast food.
In the case of treatment, drugs may be used if the first treatment does not improve or if there are serious complications, and surgical treatment may also be considered in the adult age. However, the basic treatment for obesity in children and adolescents can be treated mostly through lifestyle control and exercise along with the aforementioned dietary control.
It is important to keep the exercise of sufficient intensity for an appropriate time every day, and to correct habits such as sedentary lifestyle, games, and sleep time, while preventing the child from overburdening the joints due to weight bearing. Such efforts are not easy for children alone, and all families must work together to control obesity in children and adolescents, which has increased rapidly after the coronavirus. If necessary, it is necessary to have a healthy childhood and adolescent through confirmation of complications and management of obesity with a specialist’s consultation. [글 : 중앙대병원 비만영양클리닉 이대용 교수 / 소아청소년과 전문의]
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