Word: overweight
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...that hasn't stopped them from coming up with a long list of potential candidates. The theory that has the broadest support among scientists holds that early puberty is somehow tied up with a much more familiar phenomenon: weight gain. America is in the midst of an epidemic of overweight and obese kids; between the late '70s and the early '90s, the percentage of children ages 6 to 11 who were overweight nearly doubled, from 6.5% to 11.4%, according to the National Center for Health Statistics...
...Paul Kaplowitz, a pediatric endocrinologist with the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, Va., explains, "We've known for a long time that very overweight girls tend to mature earlier, and very thin girls, such as anorexics, tend to mature later than normal. We think mildly overweight girls may be maturing early as well." Kaplowitz emphasizes that the correlation is merely statistical; not every girl with a little extra baby fat will develop breasts early...
...development should be linked is not well understood. But Kaplowitz suspects early breast development may be encouraged by a protein called leptin. "We know that fat cells produce leptin," he says. "And leptin is necessary for the progression of puberty." Another clue, according to Duke's Freemark, is that overweight girls have more insulin circulating in their blood. Says Freemark: "Those higher levels of insulin appear to stimulate the production of sex hormones from the ovary and the adrenal gland...
...SHAPE Even as the number of overweight children increases, many schools are reinforcing unhealthy habits by cutting back on gym classes. Physical education is meant to provide exercise and encourage lifetime fitness, but a recent study found that only 26% of high schools require at least three years of phys ed. It's worse in lower grades: California middle schoolers get only 25 minutes of physical activity a week...
...little warmth and humor never hurt either. Bowdoin requires a second, shorter essay on an influential teacher. Most students opt for a boiler-plate hymn to the hardest teacher in school. But a rare description of a teacher who "was big, but not overweight...like you could trust her to provide you with bread and beef through the winter" got the committee laughing. And the essay's touching conclusion--"she taught me how to improve from a mistake and still like myself"--sent them straight for the ADMIT stamp. Otherwise, the student's B record would not have...