Word: weighted
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...understand the damage that obesity can do, investigators first have to understand the very dynamics of fat, and that knowledge has been slow in coming. The accepted wisdom had long been that we're all born with a fixed number of fat cells, and gaining or losing weight is simply a matter of filling or emptying them. But things are more complicated than that. As children develop, they continue to add fat cells to their body--at least until a certain age. Scientists don't yet know if kids who eat more food accumulate more cells, but studies...
...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...
...child eats properly and stays active enough to keep calorie input in line with what's burned off. Kumar says the key to reversing liver abnormalities--not to mention all the additional burdens excess fat places on the heart, bones and other organs--is to detect signs of weight gain in kids early. "We don't want to get to the point where children are so overweight, they have trouble moving," she says. "If that happens, we've lost the battle." As any parent of an overweight child knows, in the war on obesity, every battle counts...
Every parent wants to do the right thing. A recent survey found that 80% of parents of kids ages 6 to 11 feel they are responsible for their child's weight and physical fitness--and the fact is, in many ways they are. So why the disconnect between intentions and results? "This is a classic example in which parents need to literally walk the walk," says Dr. David Katz, of Yale University's School of Public Health. "We know that kids will be more active if their parents are more active." The key, says Katz, is to get the entire...