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 Adolescents are consuming fewer calories and carbohydrates and more
healthy unsaturated fats than they were more than a decade ago, the
analysis of U.S. survey data found.
Along with these shifts in eating habits, teens also developed
increased levels “good” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol
that helps purge blood vessels of debris and lower levels of
triglycerides - dangerous fats that can make blood thicker, stickier
and more prone to clots.
“We found that the decrease in severity of the metabolic syndrome
was driven by favorable changes in triglycerides and HDL
cholesterol,” said senior study author Dr. Mark DeBoer of the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
“This supports the important idea that changes to your lifestyle
choices are the key to improving cardiovascular risk status,” DeBoer
added by email.
Metabolic syndrome encompasses a combination of health risk factors
- hypertension, obesity, elevated blood sugar, high triglycerides
and low HDL cholesterol - that often occur together. Having
metabolic syndrome is also associated with decreased sensitivity to
the hormone insulin, which allows sugars to build up in the blood.
Left untreated, this syndrome can lead to serious health
complications. The likelihood of developing the syndrome and
severity of symptoms can be influenced by genetics, but may also be
modified with diet and exercise, DeBoer and colleagues note in the
journal Pediatrics.
To assess the interaction between changes in diet, exercise and
metabolic syndrome severity over time, researchers analyzed
nationwide survey data collected from 1999 to 2012 for 5,117 youth
aged 12 to 19 years.
Overall, about 10 percent of teens in the study had metabolic
syndrome. The prevalence didn’t change over the study period despite
a significant increase in what’s known as body mass index (BMI), a
ratio of weight relative to height that is used to track obesity.
Researchers didn’t find changes in hypertension or blood sugar over
the course of the study. They also didn’t find changes in overall
physical activity from 2007 to 2012 when the survey included
exercise data.
Still, the severity of metabolic syndrome, calculated based on the
presence and magnitude of individual risk factors, declined.
Specifically, fewer kids had low HDL or high triglycerides by the
end of the study.
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But the study can’t prove that dietary changes are what caused the
decline in metabolic syndrome severity.
Another limitation of the study is that physical activity data was
incomplete and relied on teens to accurately report on their
exercise habits, which may have masked a connection between
metabolic syndrome and fitness levels, the authors note.
“Sedentary individuals may over-report their physical activity while
obese adolescents may under-report their eating,” observed Benjamin
Guinhouya, an epidemiology researcher at the University of Lille in
France who wasn’t involved in the study.
One in six U.S. children and teens are obese, according to the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because obese children and teens often have metabolic syndrome,
studies like this are still important to understand how lifestyle
changes might influence the severity of symptoms and potentially
reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes, Guinhouya added by
email.
To help prevent metabolic syndrome, parents should keep an eye on
children’s weight and waist circumference, which unlike other risk
factors can be simple to spot, Guinhouya said.
“Efforts should be carried out to keep the waist circumference of
children to less than half their height,” Guinhouya said. “This can
be done through continuing to watch the eating choices of children
together with encouragement and promotion of an active lifestyle and
a reduction of sedentary pastimes.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1SGte4p Pediatrics, online February 9, 2016.
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