When one of the first words to come out of my daughter's mouth was "chips!"
When one of the first words to come out of my daughter's mouth was "chips!" I began to wonder what kind of eating habits we were teaching her. I knew that American kids were increasingly tubby, and that many weren't getting enough exercise. Then I read that that researchers had found clogged arteries in boys as young as 15. And I started getting a little worried.
I began to imagine my 2-year-old twins (one girl and one boy) as teenagers, lolling around on the couch as they watched television and scarfed down tortilla chips. And I realized that if we wanted our children to be "heart-healthy," now was the time for us to model the kinds of habits and activities that would point them in the right direction.
Henry McGill, MD, agrees. "The early stages of heart disease begin in childhood," McGill told WebMD. And he's helped prove it. A pathologist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, McGill was the lead author on a rather distressing new study published in the July 25, 2000, issue of the journal Circulation.
While reviewing autopsies of 760 young men and women, McGill and his colleagues found arterial blockage in 2% of the 15- to 19-year-old boys, according to their report. Although this percentage was tiny, the researchers were surprised to see any blockages at all in people of that age group.
Even worse, about 20% of the men aged 20 to 34 had similar blockages. Teenage girls and women in the study fared much better, backing up to some degree the notion that women are at lower risk of heart disease until menopause.
Apparently even infants may benefit from heart-healthy diets, although this notion remains controversial. A study just published Aug. 22, 2000 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that babies whose parents limited their fat intake to 30% to 35% of daily calories had lower cholesterol levels by age five, and they had less body fat, reducing their risk for obesity and heart disease.
The big message is that parents need to help their children lower their risk of future heart attacks and strokes. And researchers are emphasizing what I already knew: that eating a low-fat diet and getting regular exercise are the best ways to do this -- for children as well as adults.
We decided it was time to get our family on the right track and to try to be a heart-healthy family for a week. As for diet, this meant taking a look at what we were eating and choosing lower-fat alternatives. On the exercise front, it meant a major change in our lifestyle because we didn't have a consistent exercise program, either individually or as a family.
