Decisions Made While Young Impact Diabetes Potential: We’ve all heard that small changes in your lifestyle and eating patterns can pay big dividends. Two recent studies provide the actual statistics involved in change.
The first findings are related to Latino youth. Those who participated in the study were all overweight and were an average of 15 and 16 years of age. A Forbes.com report discusses the three groups studied; “A control group; a group that received nutrition classes once a week, and a group that received nutrition education plus strength training twice a week.”
Emily Ventura, from the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, an author of the recent report said, “Latino children are more insulin-resistant and thus more likely to develop obesity-related chronic diseases than their white counterparts. To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of a high-fiber, low-sugar diet on metabolic health in overweight youth, and to our knowledge, none have tested the effects of this type of intervention in a mixed-sex group of Latino youth.”
A Los Angeles Times report states, “Researchers found that 55% of all participants cut their sugar consumption by 47 grams per day — the equivalent of one can of soda — and 59% of all teens upped their fiber by an average of 5 grams a day—the amount in about half a can of beans. That decreased sugar intake accounted for an average 33% decrease in insulin secretion. More fiber resulted in an average 10% less visceral fat, which is known to increase the risk of diseases such as diabetes.”
Researchers report that the majority of the test subjects saw improvement no matter what group they were in. They believe the reason has to do with the teen’s knowledge of what the study was intended to show. Researchers believe that provided the motivation needed for the teens to make meaningful changes that provided beneficial health outcomes.
The official report was recently released in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine and piggybacks another finding related to youth and self-control.
This secondary report indicates, “Obesity in childhood and adolescence appears to track into adulthood, increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, and certain cancers in adulthood. To mount effective preventive efforts, we need better information regarding the factors involved in the etiology of childhood overweight and obesity. Self-regulation failure is one such factor that has been implicated in the development of obesity.”
Children were subjected to studies that tested their willingness to wait to gain gratification from foods they really liked. In virtually all cases researchers used candy and other treats known to be favorites of the children involved. This report seems to indicate that most children have little motivation to wait to fulfill hunger or they have not been taught how to wait. This tends to lead to eating when there is no biological need to do so. In turn, this leads to weight gain and medical complications that may accompany this gain including diabetes.
The authors from Pennsylvania State University report, “Our findings support recent studies showing that obesity is a problem that has its roots early in life and that early self-regulation failure may play a role in predicting overweight and obesity in the adolescent years. Already at ages 3 and 5 years, children who exhibited signs of self-regulation failure had higher BMI z scores and rapid weight gain into early adolescence. Failure to self-regulate energy balance in the early years is likely to be stable over time. Findings from studies on the same sample of children used in this study showed that 60% of children who were overweight at any time during the preschool years and 80% of children who were overweight at any time during the elementary period were overweight at age 12 years.”
