With everyone spending every spare sou of their medical attention allotment on H1N1, so many other (way more?) important stories are getting buried without people paying them the slightest heed.
One of the scarier reports this week came out of the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in which a pretty detailed analysis of the health of several thousand teenagers is going downhill rather than getting better.
Thus, among these kids aged 14-15, over the last 6 years, 21 % now have at least one major risk factor for heart disease (it was 17 % 6 years ago) and an amazing 9 % more of them have high cholesterol (it’s gone from 7 % to 16 %), while obesity has only gone up 2 % (to 13 %).
And make no mistake: studies have shown clearly that kids who already have risk factors for heart disease in their teens are much more likely to persist (even to raise) in having those risk factors into adulthood, when they start to pay the costs of those abnormalities.
What’s happening out there?
Well, anyone with even a single functioning brain cell can figure this one out: they are sitting way too much and not being active nearly enough.
And if we – governments, educators, responsible adults, and most of all, parents – don’t start doing something about it, those kids will end up living fewer years in poorer health than we do.
Is that what we really want to leave them?
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