US launches plan to tackle childhood obesity
BMJ 2000; 321 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7274.1432/d (Published 09 December 2000) Cite this as: BMJ 2000;321:1432All rapid responses
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The following letter on chilhood obesity was sent to the New York
Times and was unpublished. No one seems to want to make a conncection with
insufficient breastfeeding and deficits of tryptophan associated with
bottle feeding where tryptophan is necessary for the development of brain
serotonin. Brain serotonin deficits are linked to a variety of emotional-
behavioral disorders including eating disorders. How many obese children
have been breastfeed for "two years of age and beyond", as recommended by
WHO and UNICEF? See:
http://www.violence.de/prescott/pppj/article.html
http://www.violence.de/prescott/reviews/hrdy.html
http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html
BIOBEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS
9 Midline Drive #2-23
Slaterville Springs, NY 14887
607.539.7629
jwprescott
www.violence.de
26 October 2000
Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Dear Sir,
Eating disorders--anorexia, bulimia and obesity--have become the
current popular indicators of our national psychopathology that are linked
to depression, loneliness, hate/love, anxiety, phobias, obsessive-
compulsive disorders, etc. (Goode: Watching Volunteers Eat, Psychiatrists
Seek Clues to Obesity-NYT, 10/24/00).
Surprisingly, no mention was made that eating disorders are strongly
linked to brain serotonin disorders, a linkage that has been well
documented by Professor Judith Wurtman at the MIT's Clinical Research
Center (Wurtman and Suffes: The Serotonin Solution, 1996). Deficits of
brain serotonin are well known to mediate depression, impulse dyscontrol
and violence.
Less well known are the linkages of brain serotonin deficits to the
lack of breastfeeding, where the amino acid tryptophan is richly present
in colostrum and breastmilk but absent in formula milk. Tryptophan is an
essential dietary nutrient, which is converted into brain serotonin. Only
14% of American mothers are breastfeeding at one year, when WHO and UNICEF
recommend breastfeeding for "two years of age and beyond".
Normal brain development is being compromised in generations of
Americans through insufficient breastfeeding, which can be considered a
significant contributing factor to the health epidemics of depression,
impulse dyscontrol, violence and eating disorders that are becoming more
and more a part of American life (see: www.violence.de).
Sincerely,
James W. Prescott, Ph.D.
BioBehavioral Systems
Competing interests: No competing interests
If you really want to discourage, slow down, perhaps even stop
childhood obesity. Outlaw all bicycle laws, unless a person is
interfering with the right of way of others.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Childhood obesity needs an environmental cure. It's child's play!
Obesity and one of it's most evil sequelae , type 2 Diabetes, are not
really ' medical conditions '- in the sense that we doctors can do
anything about them.
I tried very hard for several years in our small medical practice in
Glasgow to change behaviour patterns with groups of patients meeting as
weekly clubs and meshing them with an exercise referral scheme as well as
specialist practice-based dietetic advice. At one time half my patients
would appear with their weighing -in sheet and I would weigh them and then
congratulate or commiserate before handing out more leaflets and wise
advice.
My main target were my Type 2 diabetics and at one time I felt very
proud of having 'cured 'three of them by a combination of weight loss and
increased exercise. I became one of those exceptionally boring advocates
of health promotion but I was really quite blinkered. My star patients
eventually succumbed to the old abdominal roly poly and were soon sucked
back into the awful whirlpool of insulin insensitivity and it's associated
horrors.
A few patients have remained thinner and more active but I now realise
that it is extremely difficult to change someone's behaviour permanently.
In fact, I think it borders on arrogance for us doctors to think we can
change the lives of others by changing their behaviour. I now realise that
it wasn't my patients who didn't understand, it was me who didn't
understand.
Obesity and diabetes are essentially 'normal' adaptive response to
our abnormal environment. It's a bit like that American Psychiatrist who
said a few years ago that the odd people nowadays aren't the ones that are
depressed but the ones that are happy. It's now fast reaching the stage
where to have a BMI of less than 25 will be abnormal.
I now understand that obesity is an environmental problem.
It is a problem of immense proportions that affects all of us but is
particularly important for our children. This editorial concentrated on
sporting activities as organised by agencies such as schools. But the real
engine of childhood activity isn't formal sports at all but the chaotic
frenzy of that much maligned and misunderstood jewel of childhood,
child's play. Child's play is the activity that stretches their physical
as well as their emotional development. It needs to have a bit of danger
and it needs to be unstructured and it must be free from the interference
of adults.
I am very grateful to Dr Meyer Hillman of the Policy Institute in
London for the wonderful insight into the health implications of Child's
Play that he recently gave at a Play Scotland conference in Glasgow. He
stressed how we adults have made our society adult-centric and that the
most adverse adult-centric change affecting our children has been adult
car-centric behaviour. This has created a very hostile environment where
parents are loathe to allow their children to play outside due to the very
real danger from an excessive number of vehicles travelling at dangerous
speeds.
We now have a society that believes that roads exist only for the
conveyance of cars and that children should 'know' not to play in the
street.The street has been deprived of all social functions and is now a
linear car park with a race track down the middle. He also highlighted the
abnormal fear of strangers fanned by newspapers interested only in profit.
The evidence shows that murders of children by strangers has remained
about the same since the fifties. In fact, the real danger for children
from all types of assault are their parents and other relatives. Parents
now have this erroneous perceived fear which makes them restrict their
child's adventures for fear of assault by a stranger.
Now we have children driven to school by parents because the roads
are so busy ( busy due to parents driving children to school of course )
and children now not being permitted to play boisterously in school for
fear of litigation against the school. ( This is research recently
published in TMS of 1000 children from several English schools showing
that these schools do not allow games involving balls or anything
approaching robust play for fear of litigation in case of child
accidents.)
Play for some children now means being driven across town and dumped
in one of those horrible play centres where they bounce inanely between
bits of coloured plastic before gorging themselves in the hamburger bar or
sweet shop. No chance of taking a risk and developing their boundaries or
getting proper exercise..
America is much worse than Britain with their totally insane car
culture and cities where to be on the sidewalk is synonymous with being a
vagrant or drug dealer.
It's all those bits of walking and play that gets our metabolic freewheels
spinning . If we can't come up with a society where that is an attractive
and available option then the accelerating epidemic on both sides of the
atlantic then the effects will be terrible.
We need our governments to truly act in the interests of the people and
cease being just at the beck and call of big business.We need much lower
speed limits so our kids can venture out onto their streets. We need the
provision of many more Home Zones like they have had for many years in
countries like Holland. In a Home Zone the kid calls the shots. The cars
are restricted to 10 mph by reducing line of sight with obstacles such as
trees and swings. The street goes back to a real social function. We need
some common sense knocked into the media to prevent them frightening
parents unnecessarily simply to make profits. We need to remember how
important play was in our development and give our kids the same chance to
go wild and to let off steam in a safe environment.
Colin Guthrie
Competing interests: No competing interests