Obesity
...trition also plays its part. Fast food is showing a large increase in schools as part of student’s lunches. At the start of the 1990’s only 2% of schools offered brand name fast food for lunch. That grew to 13% in the middle of the decade. Franchises are able to sell more products and schools make more money by marking up the prices. Along with selling fast food, schools also make money by selling soft drinks. 49.9% of schools have signed contracts with soft drink makers. From 1970 to 1998 the average per person consumption of soda climbed from 22.2 gallons a year to 56 gallons. Just because schools do not have fast food companies making their students lunches does not mean they are off the hook. 75% of school lunches exceed the limits for saturated fats and fail to reduce calories from fats to below 30%. The two top excuses are budget pressures and reaching time demands. High calorie, artery clogging foods are cheap and plentiful where healthy food can be hard to find. Students are not taught about what they should be eating for lunch because teachers are busy focusing on meeting state academic standards. So many parents are blaming everyone else for their child’s weight; it’s about time that they start concentrating on their own influences on their children’s weight problems. Out of the 15% of over weight children in this world surely the majority are not as active as they should be. Television, computers, and video games in the home play a large role in that. In 1989 children watched an average of 22 hours of TV a week, now children spend 38 hours per week sitting in front of some sort of flickering screens. When parents were asked to compare their childhood health habits to their children’s, 27% of the parents claimed their children eat less healthy and 24% said their children are less active. Parents are the most important role models for their children therefore they are the main factor for change. Teaching healthy behaviors at a young age is important because as a child gets older the bad habits become harder to break. It has been proven that an obese child at age 6 has a 50% chance of obesity as an adult, while an obese child at age 10 has a 70-80% chance of being an overweight adult. Physical activity and nutrition are unfortunately not the only way people are loosing weight. There are now drugs that are being prescribed to help weight loss. Most prescription weight loss and diet drugs work through appetite suppression, but some work by creating a feeling of being full after eating a small portion. There is a new type of weight loss medications that do not work to suppress appetite but instead block the absorption of fat in the body. Yet there are still other weight loss drugs that work to increase energy to help burn calories. The main use for weight loss drugs is to treat obese individuals whose weight has serious health consequences. Along with taking the medications patients must also be on a low calorie diet. In 1983, thyroid extract was marketed under the brand names Frank J. Kellogg’s Safe Fat Reducer, Corpulin, and Marmola. The weight loss it produced was mostly lean tissue, and thyroid extract. The drug carried the risks of osteoporosis, increased heart rate, palpitations, sweating, chest pains, and sudden death. In 1940 Digitalis was used for weight loss. The use of amphetamines for weight loss was introduced in 1937 and in 1948 the drug was prescribed to two thirds of weight loss patients. In the 1970’s consumers bought over two billion amphetamine pills and they were even prescribed to children until the late 1970’s. The risks of amphetamines included accelerated heart rate, increased blood pressure, heart palpitations, dry mouth, blurred vision, hallucinations, insomnia, and many more. Phenylpropanolamine (PPA) marketed as Dexatrim, Accutrim, Decks-a-Diet, Polyamine, and Unitrin became available over the counter in 1979. Poison Control Centers reported 47,000 complaints related to PPA in 1989 alone and soon after that PPA was removed from the market. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the 1970’s, fenfluramine and phentermine (Fen-Phen) became widely prescribed as a combination in 1994 after a single research study. By 1996, 18 million prescriptions were written for this drug. The risks of this drug were primary pulmonary hypertension, valvular heart disease, and neurotoxicity. Under fire from the NAAFA and other consumer advocates and following studies that had shown the one third of the users developed valvular heart disease, the FDA strongly recommended halting the sale of the drug. So the drug companies withdrew dexfenfluramine and fenfluramine from the U.S. market in September of 1997. After the sale of Fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, some weight loss centers and physicians immediately began prescribing ephedrine-based herbal Fen-Phen and distributing the combination of phentermine and Prozac also known as fen-Pro. Next Ephedrine was under the spot light for alleged dangerous health risks. Now it is also illegal in the United States. Now there are still prescription drugs that have not been eliminated from the market. Some of those drugs include Tenuate, Adipex-P, Xenical, and Meridia. Both Xenical and Meridia are FDA approved for long time use, all others are intended to be used only temporarily and are most effective when combined with a lifestyle change such as exercise The drug Meridia helps the seriously overweight person to loose the extra weight they are carrying and keep it away. It is recommended for people that are not only over weight but also have other health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol. This medication works by increasing levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine in the nervous system. However just like any other drugs there are risks to consider. Meridia can increase your blood pressure therefore a person on the drug must continue to follow up with their doctor for blood pressure and pulse monitoring. There is an extremely long list of side effects, some of them being anxiety, constipation, depression, flu symptoms, headaches, increased appetite, nausea, painful menstruation, rash, sore throat, and many more. Another drug is Xenical; this drug blocks the absorp...