Word: excessive
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...Obese boys and girls are already starting to develop the illnesses of excess associated with people in their 40s and beyond: heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, gallstones, joint breakdown and even brain damage as fluid accumulation inside the skull leads to headaches, vision problems and possibly lower IQs. A staggering 90% of overweight kids already have at least one avoidable risk factor for heart disease, such as high cholesterol or hypertension. Type 2 diabetes is now being diagnosed in teens as young as 15. Health experts warn that the current generation of children may be the first in American history...
...alone. As more and more kids pack on more and more pounds--climbing inexorably from a healthy weight to excess weight to full-blown obesity--parents find themselves grappling with questions they never had to deal with when the only weight problems they had to think about were their own. How do you effectively control another person's eating behavior? How do you motivate someone--especially a young, impulsive, pleasure-driven someone--to make smart food choices, to get up off the couch, to turn off the television? And how do you accomplish that without making that young person feel...
...from being inert, excess fat, researchers now know, is actually an active participant in the body's biological ballet--particularly if it's visceral fat, which can surround and even suffuse organs like the liver. Relatively shallow subcutaneous fat, which sits just under the skin, imposes a weight burden on the body but remains biologically dormant--more a repository for energy than anything else. Visceral-fat cells can secrete hormones and cytokines that help control inflammation and guide energy use by all the body's other cells. Normally this regulation of cellular fueling is maintained by a well-balanced relay...
Even more alarming to doctors are the changes that excess weight can wreak on the liver. It's this organ, after all, that orchestrates the breakdown and distribution of fats and sugars from the diet. When too much of either comes in, the liver starts to keep some of the excess for itself, converting sugars from soft drinks and the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup into fat that remains within its tissues...
...know that 3% to 5% of those with fatty-liver disease will progress on to cirrhosis or to an advanced stage where you might need a liver transplant." While not all cases reach such a dangerous state, Vos notes that in about 23% of children with fatty-liver disease, excess fat can lead to inflammation and scar tissue in the organ--the first signs of trouble...