National Post (National Edition)
Childhood obesity levels soar in isolation
Pandemic may exacerbate bad health habits
For the millions of schoolchildren learning from home this school year, their “classroom” offers no playground or kickball courts for recess. Their school days end with no after-school sports or extracurricular activities.
But what they do have, as the pandemic forces a shift to virtual or hybrid education, is unfettered access to their home snack pantries and an upheaval in their structures and routines. It's a combination of forces, say experts, that has the potential to exacerbate another public health crisis: childhood obesity.
A study released by Trust for America's Health, which based its findings in part on 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioural Risk Factors Surveillance System, found that 19.3 per cent of Americans ages two to 19 are obese, compared with 5.5 per cent in the mid-1970s.
Obesity carries a range of risk factors for children, among them high blood pressure, breathing problems and Type 2 diabetes. And when it comes to the risk of COVID-19, there's increasing evidence that patients who are obese, even young patients, are far more likely to experience serious complications from the illness, including death.
Kids are now facing a worst-case scenario for their health, said Cedric Bryant, president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise.
“It's unprecedented that we're inside, we're out of normal routines. So it stands to reason that levels of inactivity are only going to worsen,” Bryant said.
Ilan Shapiro is the medical director for health education and wellness for AltaMed Health Services, a California community health network, and he oversees its Stomp program (Solutions and Treatment in Obesity Management Prevention).
He said he is seeing an uptick in young obese patients who have gained weight during the pandemic. And the advice he offers parents is simple: Stop focusing on your children, and start focusing on yourself.
“We talk a lot about kids, but we need to talk about parents, too,” Shapiro said. “We need to set a good example with our kids. That's the start for everything. No one can run a marathon without walking first.”
Shapiro tells his patients they need to start with two important steps: Clear the junk food out of the snack pantry, and make cooking meals together part of your family's routine.
“Get rid of the soda, the pepitas, the things with high calories. If your kid is going to have free access to the kitchen all day, stock it with carrots and apples. A lot of people think you need to have billions of dollars to eat healthy, but you don't. You just need to make better choices.”
Parents need to focus on the example they're setting. Healthy eating needs to be a family activity that the parents model.
“Kids are visual learners,” he said. “If I'm eating a cheesecake while I'm telling my kids to eat their greens, it's not the example they want to see.”
The issue runs deeper than lack of exercise and excess eating. Children (and adults), are using food as a way to find comfort in an uncertain time. “When you have a lot of stress, and you're bored, and you're not moving, and apart from all that you have access to something that makes you feel better, you do it. The food becomes like your drug.”
Shapiro encourages his clients to instead follow a five-step wellness plan that involves not only changes in diet, but also exercise, sleep, stress management and getting more involved in their communities to build lines of support.
Set a bedtime and stick to it. Encourage kids to talk about feelings of stress. Pencil in screen-free family time, and use it to cook a healthy meal together or connect with neighbours in a socially distanced way.
Even before the pandemic, researchers were concerned that young children were not moving enough. Amanda Staiano, associate professor of pediatric obesity at Louisiana State University, has conducted numerous studies examining the associations between physical activity, motor skills and screen time in preschoolers. She notes that 10 to 13 hours of sleep per day, less than one hour per day of screen time and at least one hour per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity were associated with higher fundamental motor skills.
Parents, many of whom are already juggling an impossible burden of working from home while caregiving and attempting to manage online schooling, shouldn't consider managing their children's weight as an additional task to be taken on, Bryant said. For families to really succeed at getting and staying healthy, rather, they need to shift their entire perspectives on what it means to move enough, and what their relationship to food is.
The key to exercise and staying healthy can be broken down to one simple rule, Bryant said.
“Find joy in the activity,” he said. “That's how you make it sustainable.”