Posted on 11/16/2011 3:06:05 PM PST by decimon
High blood sugar, obesity, poor diet, smoking, little exercise make adolescents unhealthiest in US history
CHICAGO --- A new study that takes a complete snapshot of adolescent cardiovascular health in the United States reveals a dismal picture of teens who are likely to die of heart disease at a younger age than adults do today, reports Northwestern Medicine research.
"We are all born with ideal cardiovascular health, but right now we are looking at the loss of that health in youth," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., chair and associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "Their future is bleak."
Lloyd-Jones is the senior investigator of the study presented Nov. 16 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Orlando.
The effect of this worsening teen health is already being seen in young adults. For the first time, there is an increase in cardiovascular mortality rates in younger adults ages 35 to 44, particularly in women, Lloyd-Jones said.
The alarming health profiles of 5,547 children and adolescents, ages 12 to 19, reveal many have high blood sugar levels, are obese or overweight, have a lousy diet, don't get enough physical activity and even smoke, the new study reports. These youth are a representative sample of 33.1 million U.S. children and adolescents from the 2003 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.
"Cardiovascular disease is a lifelong process," Lloyd-Jones said. "The plaques that kill us in our 40s and 50s start to form in adolescence and young adulthood. These risk factors really matter."
"After four decades of declining deaths from heart disease, we are starting to lose the battle again," Lloyd-Jones added.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Ping
Forget the diet, IMO the reason the teens of today will not have longevity is because they sit on their a$$es all day. Hard work and exercise will take up a lot of slack from the diet department.
Must stay fit!
Inactivity is a form of suicide.
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How can this be? We’ve had the nanny state looking out for them for a long time. Smoking bans, the nanny state watching everything they eat and do....
The almighty state was supposed to fix all those ills.
Why is it those of who grew up eating bacon and eggs and drinking whole milk and eating real butter, and smoked and drank, are outliving today’s youth?
There’s gotta be a problem somewhere. We ought to pass a law, yea, that’ll fix it.
Yeah, sitting in mom’s basement living on Ding Dongs whil playing games and tweeting all day will get you that
IMHO,longevity is based 95% on heredity, 2% on proper community sewage treatment, 2% on good dental health and 1% on what you stick in your pie hole. .
Just after I posted , this was received in my email
Excuse me?
Considering the number of newborns that need heart surgery I would beg leave to doubt it.
Note the word cardiovascular. Very few infants and children have coronary artery problems.
LOL!
I’ll bet, if we had an honest set of data and good statistical analysis, the results would be close to that.
Coronary artery fistula?
Sorry, the doctor is either wrong or he was badly misquoted. Even one case would prove false his, "We are all" statement and there are a lot more then one. Personally I tend to doubt the professionalism of any doctor who issues such a blanket statement. There are pretty much always exceptions to the rule. Are most people born with perfect cardiovascular health? Sure. But not all.
Combined, they account for less than one percent of congenital heart problems.
Either misquoted or a poor doctor. Either way the article is not to be tossed aside lightly, it should be hurled with great force.
One of the new designer drugs...spice is causing MI’s in teens.
Imagine having your first at 14...what will your heart be like at 50.
Patients We examined the presence and absence of 5 major traditional coronary heart disease risk factors (hypertension, smoking, dyslipidemia, diabetes, and family history of coronary heart disease) and hospital mortality among 542 008 patients with first myocardial infarction and without prior cardiovascular disease.--snip--
The total number of in-hospital deaths for all causes was 50 788. Unadjusted in-hospital mortality rates were 14.9%, 10.9%, 7.9%, 5.3%, 4.2%, and 3.6% for patients with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 risk factors, respectively. After adjusting for age and other clinical factors, there was an inverse association between the number of coronary heart disease risk factors and hospital mortality adjusted odds ratio (1.54; 95% CI, 1.23-1.94) among individuals with 0 vs 5 risk factors. This association was consistent among several age strata and important patient subgroups.
Conclusion Among patients with incident acute myocardial infarction without prior cardiovascular disease, in-hospital mortality was inversely related to the number of coronary heart disease risk factors.
I should try to read the whole article. I wonder if it was presented at the recent convention?
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