Prescribing Exercise for Obese Youth in the Primary Care Setting

摘要

The current epidemic of childhood obesity bears ngrave implications for the present and future nhealth of today’s youth.n1n Indeed, one hardly risks nhyperbole in predicting that this dramatic rise in body nfat early in life looms like a tsunami on a future of car-ndiovascular, orthopedic, and metabolic complications nwhen these overweight youth reach adulthood over the nnext several decades. During the pediatric years obese nchildren and adolescents already demonstrate increased nrisk factors for future disease, with adverse serum lipid nprofiles, systemic hypertension, type 2 diabetes, insulin nresistance, and vascular endothelial dysfunction.n2n More-nover, it can be expected that the frequency of adverse nhealth outcomes of significant obesity during the grow-ning years—psychosocial disturbances, asthma, orthope-ndic abnormalities, sleep apnea—will increase as well.