Ireland has one of the highest rates of obesity in Europe, with one in five children and over 60% of adults living with weight issues and obesity.
RSVP spoke to health professional Grace O’Malley, clinical lead for the CHI child and adolescent obesity service and a clinical specialist physiotherapist, about how we can tell if our child is overweight, what we can do to help and tips on developing healthy habits.Obesity is an actual disease, you may not be able to see if people or children have it or not. For children we use BMI growth charts.
Generally, we go up and down in our weight, and that’s completely typical. When we’re below the fourth percentile, we’re very worried about being underweight. And then if we’re above ninety eight or the ninety ninth percentiles, that is a concern. That’s the first step in terms of measurement of size, but then to get a diagnosis of actual obesity, you need to check whether a child’s level of fat tissue is affecting their body and how it works. This means checking blood pressure, breathing, heart, fitness, or if they have any urinary incontinence, or any pain. These are all the challenges that kids who have obesity would face but not everyone will have.
The first step would be to make an appointment with the GP but it is useful to call ahead and let the doctor know why you are doing this – that you want to bring them for a health check but are concerned about their weight.You would talk about health, development and growth. Everybody grows at a different speed and what’s important is that we’re healthy.
It’s really important that children aren’t exposed to social media too early. We have seen that in the hospital with kids being exposed to social media too early and being exposed to these ideas of body image very early in their lives.It’s really important that we don’t talk about this flippantly in front of children, whether that is losing weight or ‘I am so happy I lost the weight’. There may be no bad intentions but the constant talk about it is certainly not helpful.
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