Daily HealthBeat Tip

Making things worse

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I�m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

For a teen-ager, feeling bad about your body might not lead to making improvements. It could lead to making things worse.

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer of the University of Minnesota found this in survey data on girls and boys who felt the worst about their bodies. Her study, which was supported by HHS� Health Resources and Services Administration, was in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Teen-agers in our study who had high levels of body dissatisfaction were at two to three times the risk for binge eating and unhealthy weight control behaviors five years later." (10 seconds)

Neumark-Sztainer says teens can keep things from getting worse by being more positive � eating better and exercising more wisely. She says parents can help � not by criticizing, but by giving their kids options that make it easier to act on smarter choices.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 3, 2006

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