On November 16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the cardiovascular health of the nation’s teens is poor. Coronary heart disease is currently the leading cause of death and premature death in Los Angeles County; thus, many of the county’s teens are at risk to add to those statistics. The study examined children between 12 and 19 years old in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the CDC; it found that the adolescents performed poorly overall on a set of seven criteria set by the American Heart Association (AH) for ideal cardiovascular health. The study group was comprised of 4,157 adolescents aged 12 to 17. Diet was a significant factor: not one of the 5,450 children randomly selected for the survey from the U.S. population met the standards for diet. Beyond diet, only just 16.4% of boys and 11.3% of girls were rated ideal on all of the other six criteria, which included smoking, exercise, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar.
“In this country, essentially all of us are born with ideal cardiovascular health, but we lose it very quickly,” said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chief of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and senior author of the report. The findings come amid continuing concern about the implications of obesity and other factors on the health of children. Just last week, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute called for all children between 9 and 11 years old to get a cholesterol test in an effort to detect heart risk at an early age.
The new study provides an extremely comprehensive look at the issue. The results are specific to these AHA standards, and it is not known what the assessment would be if some other standards were applied. Cholesterol and blood sugar levels can be naturally elevated during puberty and level out in adulthood; how that phenomenon might affect the results is not fully understood. However, researchers note that the ideal benchmarks in the seven categories have been shown to be associated with reduced risk of heart disease. “Often, we just take an isolated focus on one of the risk factors,” Dr. Lloyd-Jones said. He added, “The package is much more powerful than any single measure.”
The seven criteria for ideal cardiovascular health are the foundation of a public-health initiative recently launched by the AHA. The goal is to get 20% of all American adults within optimal range on all seven measures. The focus on children reflects increasing awareness that while heart attacks and other consequences of cardiovascular disease typically appear later in life, the biological processes that lead to them begin in childhood. Dr. Lloyd-Jones noted that some studies indicate that “by six months, you can already see a worsening of cholesterol and blood pressure” because of diet and other factors.
The adolescents performed best on blood pressure, with more than 90% in the ideal range, and in smoking, where about 80% of those 17 and under had never smoked. Most of the teens fell short of the mark on diet: only about 20% of the adolescents met recommendations on two or three of the nutrition factors—considered an intermediate score. In regard to exercise, 50% of boys and 60% of girls did not exercise regularly for more than 60 minutes a day, the optimal target. Between 10% and 20% reported getting no exercise. About 30% to 45% had less-than-ideal cholesterol, while about one-third were either overweight or obese.
Credit : Dr. Rajesh Sharma (Paediatric Cardiovascular Surgery Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon, 27 Years Experience)
