07 April,2010 09:57 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Frighteningly high number of city kids from affluent families becoming couch potatoes and inviting heart disease, finds comprehensive study. And it blames increasing urbanisation for lack of physical activity
Urban kids are at great risk of developing early heart disease, shows a yet-to-be-published study by doctors at Jehangir Hospital.
Armed with the latest data from the city and other metros, the study has found that the slide towards heart ailments at an early age has already begun as obesity is on the rise among city children. To blame is a sedentary lifestyle, and rapid urbanisation that, in turn, creates the conditions for this.
This year the World Health Organisation has decided that urbanisation and its impact on health is to be the theme for World Health Day, which is being marked today.
"Our initial study was on the prevalence of obesity in children, which we conducted in various metros, including Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and which involved over 20,000 kids. Shockingly, we found nearly one in five children were overweight or obese," said Dr Anuradha Khadilkar, a paediatrician at Jehangir Hospital who was part of the research group. "Most of these children came from affluent homes and had low levels of physical activity. Rural kids were more active and much healthier."
The study found how urbanisation is having a negative impact on children as they turn to a sedentary lifestyle, with very little exercise by way of games that involve physical activity or sports, and parent-provided luxuries like going to school in cars.
On the contrary, poorer children from rural areas were much better off healthwise as they walked to school and had open playgrounds for physical activity.
Taking the study forward, the doctors then embarked on a project where they studied 150 obese children from the city to find out if they had developed early markers of heart disease.
"Unfortunately, we found that children showed reduction in elasticity of arteries as fat deposition had taken place. This is an early marker for heart disease and serious if seen at adolescent stage," said Khadilkar. The findings of the recent study are still being compiled and are yet to be published in a medical journal, but they clearly point out that obesity as a result of urbanisation has brought kids to the brink of heart disease.
Mumbai-based cardiologist Dr Ashish Contractor had done a similar study, which also found that schoolchildren were reporting much lesser levels of physical activity and hence were prone to heart ailments. "Ideally, a 12-year-old boy should walk 15,000 steps a day, while a girl of the same age walks should walk 12,000 steps. But our study among schoolkids found boys walked merely 10,600 steps and girls 9,000 steps," said Dr Contractor. "The sedentary lifestyle is largely because of an affluent background and availability of technology to reduce physical work."
He warned that rapid urbanisation and its impact, such as fewer playgrounds and proliferation of cars, were having an adverse impact on children's health, and that the study clearly established this link.
