Over years, obesity has grown into a major health challenge in our society especially among children. Several recent research studies have revealed that the prevalence of obesity and overweight in the U.S. was estimated to be over 67% in the adults. On the other hand, childhood obesity is becoming apparent in kids of younger ages, with research documenting a considerate increment in the proportion of obese kids who are between the ages of 2-3 years. Seemingly, the occurrence of obesity amongst 4-5 aged kids has greatly amplified from 5 to 10.4% between the years of 1976 and 2000. For the children already suffering from obesity, the probability of becoming obese in adulthood is seen to increase with kid’s age. For instance, 4-years-olds have a probability of 20% while the overweight teenagers have the highest chance of becoming obese adults (80%) (Obesity and Patient Education, n.d.).
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Therefore, the predominance of obesity in childhood shows how this trend poses a considerable risk for the future notorious health problems. For instance, there are several known psychological and physical effects related to obesity in children which include cardiovascular diseases, polycystic ovary syndrome, hypertension, gall bladder disease, pancreatitis, obstructive apnea, and hyperlipidemia. These health risks reveal how our next generation will be affected by disease; thus, extensive efforts have to be put in place to prevent this menace from happening (Boyd, 2012).
Nurses are the people who directly interact with patients or rather children who have suffered from obesity; they should take the responsibility of educating these kids, more so their parents who are sometimes the root cause of making their children obese. For instance, nurses ought to show these parents special food outlets and teach them how to read the nutrition labels patched in each food packet. In so doing, parents will acquire first hand experience. Again, nurses should come up with catchy phrases like health plate with the explanation that half of the serving dish should be green; a quarter is composed of fistful of starch, while the remaining quarter is protein. This could be represented in a diagrammatic form and also branded in T-shirts (Parker, n.d.).
Since children most of the times do not have no choice in what they eat, the nurses discourage the parents, if possible, to minimize the consumption of fast foods as most of these are less likely to be nutritious to the kid. They should also encourage them to make use of healthy cookbooks and employ a system dubbed 5-2-1-0 which implies that the parents should give their kids five veggies and fruits every day, only two hours of video gaming/computer/TV, one hour of exercises, and totally zero juice and fried foods (Boyd, 2012).
There are different consequences of obesity that occur to children suffering from overweight, and they vary from one child to the other. Some kids have been seen to develop anxiety, depression, joint problems, asthma, elevated cholesterol, and type two diabetes. Consequently, other children are affected by cardiovascular diseases, pancreatitis, hypertension, obstructive apnea, and even polycystic ovary syndrome. Nurses who are taking the initiative to educate the parents who are responsible for their kids’ food would really bring enormous changes to the health of the nation towards decreasing the cases of obesity since many people adore nurses and listen to their pieces of advice.
Obesity brings out a dull implication to the profession of nursing since the daily increase of the same gives out a picture that nurses are not doing their job as expected of them. They are expected to carry out public education to sensitize people on the drastic effects of consuming poorly nutritious foods and having bad eating habits coupled with the lack of child’s exercise (Parker, n.d.).