Pang Ya: Poor little BIG toddler!

In the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day today, the very first picture is of a two year old Chinese girl, Pang Ya, who weighs a massive 41.5kg (6.5st), although she was normal weight at birth.

I hope you can recognise the tell tale signs of thin skin and huge fluid retention? - Her poor vastly swollen face is beetroot red, which is a clear indication that the skin is thin and is so overstretched as to be near transparent, and that we are really seeing the vastly distended blood vessels beneath. Her poor eyes are barely able to open. And see how terribly swollen her poor feet are beneath their covering? - From my own experience, I can tell you without needing to see the feet themselves, that like her face, the skin will be taut and overstretched, and that dark red veins near to the skin's surface will be making her feet look red or purple or near-black. And I can tell you that they will be very painful, especially if she ever tries to walk on them, with her heavy weight pressing on those swollen veins. And when she lies down the pressure on her face will increase. Poor, poor girl! Her problem is massive fluid retention/salt sensitivity/morbid obesity/oedema/abnormally high blood volume. She must be in constant pain from those swollen veins and thin skin. She needs to be fed food that has NO ADDED SALT. She will certainly not live long if she is fed salty food and she will be in preater and greater pain.

Salty food is what causes babies and toddlers to become fat. But Pang Ya's obesity is so extreme that I strongly suspect that sometime in her short life she has been treated with one of the many prescribed medications that cause fluid retention and are even more harmful to children than to adults. Doctors around the world tend to be very ill-informed about the side-effects sodium retention and water retention which inevitably cause obesity unless salt intake is kept very low indeed.

See Child Obesity

And see Sodium in foods