Obesity and the Salt Connection and Other Stuff: Obese children with weight-related diabetes should be given gastric band surgery from age 15, says expert paediatrician Prof Julian Shield

Monday, 2 March 2009

Obese children with weight-related diabetes should be given gastric band surgery from age 15, says expert paediatrician Prof Julian Shield

Fat children should be given gastric bands to tackle diabetes says expert
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Rates of type 2 diabetes - a condition linked with obesity - have soared across all age groups in a decade as Britain struggles to control its weight problem. Seventeen per cent of British children - 900,000 in total - are classed obese or so fat that their health is in danger. Around 1,400 of these have type 2 diabetes, with around 100 new cases a year. The condition is usually diagnosed in those over 40 but rates in children are rising.

Gastric banding for obese children under 18 has been available on the NHS since 2006 but only in extremely rare cases. Such surgery has a less than one per cent risk of fatality although up to 10 per cent of patients can suffer complications."

That's a helluva high percentage of patients that can suffer complications! - It's a crying shame that people are not given the vitally important information that child obesity is caused by the high sodium content of much of the food that children eat. The fluid retention at the heart of all obesity is not reduced by calorie reduction or by exercise, so dieting is inappropriate, unnecessary and ineffective. - Here is what it says about child obesity on my website:

When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods. Just one cheeseburger, for instance, contains almost double the recommended daily salt maximum for children. There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body. Overweight children should not be put on a diet; dieting is harmful and unnecessary and does not usually result in weight loss. Once children start dieting it is often the beginning of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and increasing weight and ill-health.

Unfortunately bread contains a lot of salt and most families eat quite a lot of bread because of using it for sandwiches in packed lunches, and for toast, etc. Because of its high salt content bread is not a healthy food for little children or for anyone who is overweight. Some bread manufacturers have lowered the salt content of certain loaves, but most bread still usually contains 0.5g or more of sodium per 100g. This is too much. - Always check on the packet; look for the lowest sodium content.

Cheese is often recommended as being good for children because it contains calcium, but cheese is not really good for children because it has a high salt content. So don't give them a lot of it. Children can get plenty of calcium by drinking milk and by eating yogurt (but avoid the sort of yogurt that has lots of chemical additives).

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
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