Ending childhood obesity to improve adult health
Childhood obesity is a metabolic ticking time bomb, leading to increased rates of high blood pressure and high cholesterol. In this video, HealthMaker Alan Greene, MD, chief medical officer at Scanadu, explains this traumatic shift in kid’s health.
Transcript
Most of our most pressing health needs have their roots in pediatrics. Even things you would think of as diseases of the elderly, uh,
osteoporosis, it happens when you're a kid. [MUSIC PLAYING]
When I started in pediatrics, it was 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 had some genetic condition. It's been a dramatic change in the health of kids. The obesity epidemic is a metabolic ticking time bomb.
It really is threatening to overwhelm our health care system and rob children and young adults have so much joy in life.
A lot of that comes from our American culture. On the day a child is born, they're able to learn to like almost any food, any healthy food.
But that starts to shut down. And in the critical window, we've been exposing kids primarily to processed, jarred foods that
don't taste like real foods. So the nice thing for a new parent is that kids are remarkably adaptable.
And it's-- it's actually very easy, and joyful, inexpensive, and not time consuming to teach them to like great food if you
get started early. Our bodies are built to be able to heal themselves, to repair themselves. And even we do something very invasive,
like some kind of heroic surgery, the surgeon is relying on the body's ability to knit itself back together layer after layer.
So I think in medicine, we should start with a respect for the body's healing process. But then, use whatever technology supports that.
It's not so much an overreliance on technology I'm concerned about, but just, uh, it's a perspective switch.
[HEARTBEAT] [BEEPING]
child development
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