My brother’s child is 9 years old and rapidly becoming obese. They have taken him to doctors and have even put him a special diet for a year. What can the parents do to help the situation?
Please help!
Thank you,
Tom

1. Nowadays doctors and health specialists say that children need to be on a good diet and get all the nutrition that they need but as the reports show, the obesity rate increases in children which causes hypertension at early age. Since we really take good care of our children at early age, why is the obesity rate is keep increasing?

Any ideas? I’m doing a presentation for nutrition class on possible solutions or preventions to lower the obesity rate in our country. Here’s what I thought of so far:

Require schools to have nutrition education in order to graduate (childhood obesity is a huge issue right now)

Ban junk food from schools (such as pizza, hamburgers, taco bell, etc) and have more salad bars with a variety of food to teach children how to make healthy choices.

Have more restaurants who offer smaller portion sizes (like TGI Friday’s "right portion, right price")

Have more restaurants consult a Dietitian to help create a menu with healthy options.

Only 5% of Medical schools require their students to take a nutrition class and even then, its usually just a basic class. This is a problem because most people consult their doctors for nutrition advice when they aren’t very qualified. I think all medical schools should require nutrition classes.

I need more ideas please. Thanks!

…and several more health risks, as claimed by doctors and medical researchers? What could be the natural and less expensive way to minimize or prevent all these risks?

Thanks for your helpful ideas! )

It has been explained to me that the SSRIs we have, have helped many to cope with depression. Just like any other disease, this chemical imbalance can also be treated. Someone with diabetes can be treated with insulin-and the same goes here. I agree it is a good thing we have SSRIs. But is it worth giving agains’t all the odds? -And why are doctors more dedicated towards their medicice than helping the individual?

I have social anxiety and when I take prozac it helps enormously. But the down fall is I get very very tired. I sleep almost the whole weekend and have no energy? The risks of sleeping so much are great- obesity, osteoporosis, developing depression on top of the anxiety, etc

But yet somehow my psychiatrist continues to prescribe prozac to me. I guess she too believes SSRIs are such a great asset to society- they must help treat everyone-who cares about the side-effects?

Why do psychiatrists believe so much in SSRIs that they forget to treat patients?
I didn’t write prozac caused obestity. Sleeping all the time could.