Childhood Obesity and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Environment
Grown-ups and kids are different in some ways, and one of them appears to be how they react to atypical antipsychotics. These drugs are also known as second-generation antipsychotics, and they have pretty much replaced first-generation antipsychotics. There isn’t much difference, but the difference is an important one: with SGAs, the patient is less likely […]
Is Childhood Obesity Inescapable?
With a title like this, you have to read the story: “Childhood obesity almost ‘inevitable’, say experts” (link is ours). Which experts? Could this be? Must we resign ourselves to the prospect of the ever-enlarging children? Journalist Madeleine Brindley has been talking to people who fear this might be the case. In Wales, as in […]
Excitotoxins, Prescription Drugs, and Obesity
We have talked a lot about the Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm, Dr. Pretlow’s term for the concurrence of events that might not have been enough, by themselves, to start an epidemic, but which have a devastating effect when they pile up. Other medical professionals who treat and write about childhood obesity also point to a […]
The “DSM-5” and Obesity, Part 2
We looked yesterday at the difficulties faced by the editors of the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, as explained by Gary Greenberg, who also talks about the currently favored method of considering an array of symptoms. Until a more “scientific” way can be found, the hope is to move away from either/or definitions of […]
Childhood Obesity: More Things to Worry About
We know that kids in America and all over the world are miserable about their excess body weight. We know that obesity in the young can lead to the early onset of severe medical conditions that used to mainly afflict adults. We know that, for many people, food addiction is as real and as dangerous as […]
Childhood Obesity and Other News for School Nurses
It’s great to be an employed professional, out in the world of work, and it’s even greater to have a life to go home to. But in between all that, how do you keep up with developments in your field? If you’re busy looking after the needs of a school full of kids, not to […]
Stress-Eating and Recession Obesity
You know a writer is onto something when a piece she wrote almost two years ago is even more true than on the day it was first published. Georgia Lund, a contributor to the Yahoo! Network, made a few observations about the relationship between the murky fiscal environment we have been immersed in and the […]
A Selection of Dr. Pretlow’s Conference Presentations
The reader will enjoy Dr. Pretlow’s account of his experiences at the 2009 ECOG scientific meeting, where he conducted a plenary session and introduced the idea that the childhood obesity epidemic is caused by emotionally driven comfort eating, which often results in addiction. This idea was based, he explained, “on the anonymous posts of thousands […]
The STRONG Kids Project
A while back, a Scientific American article described the work of the STRONG Kids Project, whose home is the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. The acronym stands for Synergistic Theory and Research on Obesity and Nutrition Group, and the piece contained one particular sentence so sadly appropriate today, and so likely to remain […]
Undoing the BFRB Strand
Childhood Obesity News has been looking at the possible relationship between two phenomena — compulsive eating and body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) — sometimes known as displacement behaviors. The person subjected to BFRB will develop a behavior or a tic that alleviates tension. It might be tugging on a lock of hair, or picking at a skin blemish, […]