Sadly, a number of parents in our culture can’t say no to their children when it comes to eating food and making healthy eating choices. Even more unfortunate is that being obese or overweight as a young child can lead to early vertebrae degeneration according to a recent study from Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). In reality, this recent study finds that we as parents are setting our children up for back pain over the course of time when they become an adult.
Almost 200 young adults and children from age 12 to 20 who said they experience back pain were studied. Surely, young adults and children were not allowed to participate in the study who had suffered from conditions or ailments that would pre-dispose them to back pain as well as trauma from an accident to the back. Many agree that there is a link between vertebrae disc abnormalities and an increased body weight in young adults and children.
Not to mention, the study affirms that over 50% of the young adults and children studied had some abnormality in the lower back region or lumbar region of the vertebrae. Regrettably, many of those spinal cord disc abnormalities happen in the discs on the vertebrae. As a rule a spine disc disorder arises when a protruding or ruptured disc, which are the jellied cushions in between the bones of the vertebrae place compression on nerves which produces back pain and assumingly tingling sensations.
According to the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 percent of children (ages 6 – 11) and 18 percent young adults (ages 12 -19) are obese or overweight in our culture. You heard me; that is 33 percent or one in three of OUR young adults and children. In general, young adults and children north of the 85th percentile are oftentimes thought to be overweight or at risk of being so.
Body Mass Index or BMI is a ratio of body weight and height which is a prevalently used as a measurement for obesity. Of course, a lower BMI has a link with being underweight or a healthy body size. Moreover, a higher BMI score has a interrelationship with being overweight.
In the end, the results of this study illustrates there is a strong relationship between increased BMI in young adults and children with lower back pain more abnormalities of the spinal cord for those with higher BMI.
According to the data from the study, this could be a forewarning of significant health problems given the expense of back pain in our society.
Now that we know we are part of the problem as parents… The question is what are we going to do about it?
