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December 24th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY, Dec. 23 (HealthDay News) — Children who are overweight or
obese during early childhood have a greater risk of having asthma at age 8
than normal-weight kids, a new study finds.
Researchers in Sweden followed more than 2,000 children for eight
years, using preschool and school health records to track their height and
weight at ages 1 year, 18 months, 4 years and 7 years. Parents completed
questionnaires about their child’s health, including asthma and allergy
status.
Children who had persistently high BMI (body mass index) — in the 85th
percentile or above — throughout early childhood, or who were
normal-weight toddlers but gained weight and had a high BMI at age 7, were
more likely to have asthma than kids who had a normal body weight.
However, kids who had a high BMI at an early age — at 18 months or 4
years — but slimmed down by age 7 were not at higher risk of asthma than
other kids.
“If the children are only overweight during the early period before 4
years of age we do not see an increased risk of asthma during school age,”
said lead study author Jessica Magnusson, a Ph.D. student at the Institute
of Environmental Medicine in Stockholm. “However, if they are
persistently overweight, or overweight at a later age — age 7 — then
there is an association with asthma at age 8.”
Asthma, characterized by inflammation of the airways, may cause
wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and trouble breathing.
The study is in the January issue of Pediatrics.
At age 8, about 6 percent of the kids in the study had asthma. Those
overweight at age 4 and age 7 had a nearly 2.5 times greater risk of
having asthma.
Researchers excluded kids who’d had early symptoms of wheezing or had
been diagnosed with asthma prior to age 2.
Researchers also took into account parental history of asthma. A high
BMI was associated with an increased risk of asthma only in kids without
parental history of the disease, according to the study.
Researchers pointed out that their study does not show that being
overweight or obese causes asthma. However, the march upward in childhood
obesity rates has coincided with an increase in asthma rates, leading some
to speculate that the two may be linked biologically.
One theory is that leptin, a hormone found in fat tissue, may
contribute to an inflammatory immune response that could trigger asthma,
which is a chronic inflammation of the airways.
A prior study found higher leptin levels in overweight children, and
that even among overweight children with similar BMIs, kids with asthma
tended to have higher leptin levels.
The current study also found an association between being overweight at
age 7 and sensitization to airborne allergens. Sensitization, or the
presence of certain antibodies in the blood, often indicates an allergy to
a particular substance, but researchers did not track actual symptoms.
Getting control of a child’s weight is important to prevent asthma and
other conditions that are showing up more in kids, including diabetes and
high cholesterol, said Nancy Copperman, director of public health
initiatives in the Office of Community Health at North Shore-LIJ Health
System in Great Neck, N.Y.
And obesity and asthma can feed off each another. Children experiencing
asthma symptoms and having difficulty breathing may be less apt to
participate in physical activity, while parents may worry about their
asthmatic kids and not allow them to do certain things, such as run
outside in the cold, Copperman said.
“What this study argues for is prevention,” she said. “The kids who
were heavier and got leaner didn’t have the increased incidence of asthma,
while those who were lean and got heavier or were heavy from the beginning
did … Obesity is not a cosmetic problem. It has real health
consequences.”
More information
The American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry
has more on childhood obesity.
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