HHS HealthBeat (January 09, 2008)

Not really overweight

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

Maybe chunky kids have troubles, too. A study finds these teens, who tend toward overweight but are not overweight, show some signs of future heart trouble.

Yanbin Dong of the Medical College of Georgia saw it in data on teens in Georgia. His study in the journal Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Dong says kids at risk of overweight have risk readings between healthy weight kids and overweight kids in things like blood pressure and salt in their urine. He says they need to head off trouble. But he says folks have not paid much attention to kids who fall between healthy weight and overweight.

``The ones falling in between also have to be taken care of, in terms of healthy lifestyles, exercise, more fruit, less TV view, and so on, so forth.’’ (11 seconds)

Learn more at hhs.gov.

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

Last revised: January, 09 2008