Overweight boys at heart muscle damage risk
‘Maintain healthy weight during adolescence’ Childhood adversity linked to toxic stress
NEW YORK, Aug 5, (RTRS): Men who were overweight as teens may be more likely to develop a rare type of heart muscle damage that can cause heart failure than men who maintained a healthy weight during adolescence, a Swedish study suggests.
Researchers examined data on height, weight and fitness levels from more than 1.6 million men who enlisted in compulsory military service in Sweden between 1969 and 2005, when they were 18 or 19 years old. At the start, about 10 percent were overweight and about 2 percent were obese.
After a median follow-up of 27 years, 4,477 men developed a disease called cardiomyopathy that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the body. This can lead to heart failure.
Compared to men whose weight was right in the middle of a healthy range in adolescence, men who had a healthy weight that was slightly higher during their teen years were 38 percent more likely to develop cardiomyopathy, the study found. Men who were overweight as teens were at least twice as likely to develop this heart muscle damage, and men who were obese had at least five times the risk.
Cardiomyopathy
Men who developed cardiomyopathy were about 46 years old on average at the time of their disorder.
“We postulated that the increase in heart failure rates in the young might be due to increasing rates of overweight and obesity,” said senior study author Dr Annika Rosengren of the Sahlgrenska Academy and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
“We were able to demonstrate that there was a very strong link between being obese when young and early heart failure,” Rosengren said by email.
Cardiomyopathy is still rare, and only 0.27 percent of the men were diNEW YORK, Aug 5, (RTRS): Children who suffer adverse experiences like abuse and neglect may be less likely to have mental health problems in adulthood if they play team sports as teenagers, a US study suggests.
Adverse childhood experiences, commonly called ACEs, can include witnessing parents fight or go through a divorce, having a parent with a mental illness or substance abuse problem, or suffering from sexual, physical or emotional abuse. ACEs have been linked to what’s known as toxic stress, or wear and tear on the body that leads to physical and mental health problems that often continue from one generation to the next.
The current study focused on whether team sports – which have been linked to a variety of physical and psychological benefits – might diminish the potential for lasting mental health problems among adults with a history of ACEs. Researchers followed 4,888 teens exposed to ACEs and 4,780 teens without this exposure for more than a decade, starting when they were 15 years old on average.
agnosed with any one of the different forms of this disorder during the study.
People with a body mass index (BMI) below 20, lean but within a healthy weight range, had a low risk of cardiomyopathy, researchers report in Circulation.
However, that risk steadily increased as weight increased, even among men on the high end of what’s considered a healthy weight, with BMIs ranging from 22.5 to 25.
There are several types of cardiomyopathy,
Teens who played team sports had 24 percent lower odds of receiving a depression diagnosis by young adulthood and 30 percent lower odds of receiving an anxiety diagnosis, the study found.
“Our data indicate that team sports participation in adolescence may be associated with better mental health outcomes in adulthood due to increased self-esteem, increased feelings of social acceptance, and feeling more connected to the school environment,” said lead study author Dr Molly Easterlin of the University of California Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
“It may change how kids navigate school or develop relationships,” Easterlin said by email. “It may make them more resilient.”
Among the teens in the study with ACE exposure, 21 percent reported two or more ACEs, according to the study in JAMA Pediatrics.
The most common ACE was having a single parent, which impacted about 27 percent of all study participants, followed by parental incarceration, which impacted 17 percent, and parental alcohol misuse,
but the causes are poorly understood. In one form, called dilated cardiomyopathy, the heart muscle becomes weak and can’t pump blood efficiently. In another, called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the heart muscle becomes stiff and the heart can’t fill with blood properly.
In the study, men who were extremely obese with a BMI of 35 and over in their youth were eight times more likely to develop dilated cardiomyopathy as adults compared to men
reported by 14 percent.
Sexual abuse was the least commonly reported ACE, affecting about 5 percent of the teens, followed by physical abuse at 9 percent and emotional neglect at 11 percent.
Much of the connection between team sports and the reduced potential for anxiety or depression appeared to be explained by social rather than physical aspects of sports participation, researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics.
Feeling more connected to the school community, feeling socially accepted, and having a higher selfesteem together explained 16 to 36 percent of the reduced depression and anxiety risk associated with team sports.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how team sports during adolescence might directly impact mental health in adulthood. It’s also possible that instead of team sports causing better mental health, that the reverse was true and youth with better mental health were more likely to choose to play team sports.
who were lean in their youth. It was not possible to estimate increased risk for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in men with BMI 35 and above because there were too few cases to provide a meaningful analysis.
The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how obesity directly causes cardiomyopathy. It’s also not clear if results from this study of predominantly white men would apply to women or to other racial or ethnic groups.