What's changed about treating the health of children?

It used to be unusual to see kids with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar or a large waist size, but now it’s becoming very common. In this video, HealthMaker Alan Greene, MD, chief medical officer at Scanadu, explains why.

Transcript

00:00

For the first time, we've crossed the threshold. Most children have a chronic illness in childhood. [UPBEAT MUSIC]

00:12

Pediatrics has completely revolutionized since when I first entered. When I started in pediatrics, it was

00:18

unusual to see a child with high blood pressure. You just didn't see it-- or a child who had cholesterol out of whack unless they

00:26

had some genetic condition. You didn't see kids that had blood sugars that were abnormal unless they had the rare, really uncommon type 1 diabetes.

00:33

You didn't see kids with a waist size of 38 or 40 inches. But today, in the US, 2/3 of American high-school students

00:42

and middle-school students already have at least one of those middle-aged conditions. It's been a dramatic change in the health of kids.

00:49

It used to be that infectious diseases were the big topic. That's not such the case anymore. Now, for the first time, we've crossed the threshold.

00:58

Most children have a chronic illness in childhood. So when you look at what's changed, why does that happen?

01:05

It's not our genes that have changed. It's how we eat. It's how we move. And it's the chemicals we're exposed to,

01:11

environmental pressures of one kind or another, which to me is really exciting. That means that for all the most pressing health issues

01:18

in childhood-- and there's a lot of them that are increasing quickly-- asthma, and allergies, ADHD, the other things I

01:24

already mentioned. For all of those, there are lifestyle and environmental solutions to those problems.