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'Baby Fat' Cute, but Contributes to Adult Heart Disease

By Peggy Peck
WebMD Health News

March 3, 2000 (San Diego) -- Forget the chubby cheeks -- obesity at any age is unhealthy, say researchers who study the progression of heart disease.

Obesity begins to threaten the health of the heart as early as age 2, says Christine L. Williams, MD, MPH, who presented a study of over 1,200 preschool-aged children at an American Heart Association meeting here.

Williams says obesity in the very young is linked to high blood pressure, but that's not all. Overweight toddlers also experience a decrease in the level of HDL, the so-called "good" cholesterol. Decreasing HDL occurs with increases in body weight, according to Williams. She tells WebMD that these latest findings support the need for "prevention before any risk factor exists." The goal, she says, is to prevent obesity at any age.

Williams, director of the Children's Cardiovascular Health Center at Columbia University in New York, studied children who were enrolled in nine Head Start centers. She says 75% of the children were black or Hispanic. Twice a year the children are examined at the centers, she says. Exams included measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol, blood sugar, height, weight, and body fat.

Williams says that almost 11% of the children had high or borderline high blood pressure. Risk increases with increased weight, and she says that the fattest children were two to three times more likely to develop high blood pressure. She tells WebMD that a normal blood pressure for the tallest 5-year-old would be 115/75.

Williams says the best approach to weight control in these very young children is a combination of nutrition and exercise. "At age 2, a child needs at least a half-hour of exercise a day." While it may seem that every 2-year-old has at least that much exercise a day, "too often, today, parents are telling children to sit down and sit still." The best approach is to encourage parents to "get the children outside for exercise and away from the television."

Williams discussed her paper at a press conference devoted to childhood obesity. At the same press conference, Lynn L. Moore, DSc, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, said a study of 92 parents of children aged 3-5 at the beginning of the study suggests that parental attitudes about food have a strong impact on weight in their offspring.

She tells WebMD that the children most at risk are those whose parents fluctuate between being very concerned about food intake and weight to tendencies of impulsive eating or loss of control. The kids who gained the least amount of weight had parents who were not likely to indulge in impulsive eating, according to Moore.

Ronald M. Lauer, MD, of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, tells WebMD that the findings of these childhood studies are important because "obesity tends to track very closely from toddlerhood through adolescence and adulthood." Thus, he says, prevention must begin at the cradle.

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