There’s a little bit of good news on the childhood obesity front.
A new Canadian study has found that rates of high blood pressure among Canadian kids are very low. That’s despite the fact that there are record levels of obese and overweight children and teens and obesity and high blood pressure generally go hand in hand.
The findings, drawn from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measure Survey, found that just under one per cent of kids had elevated blood pressure levels and another two per cent had blood pressure readings that were borderline high.
“The levels of blood pressure in Canadian youth was not elevated,” said Dr. Gilles Paradis, a professor of public health at McGill University in Montreal and lead author of the study.
“We found that the average blood pressure of youth was lower than we expected and that the proportion of youth who had elevated blood pressure was not as high as we expected.”
The findings were based on readings from nearly 2,100 children and teens aged six to 19 from across the country.
This is the first time in decades there have been national estimates of rates of elevated blood pressure based on readings from Canadian children.
However, a study Paradis and others published in 1999 reported that about 20 per cent of children in Quebec had blood pressure readings that were either elevated or borderline elevated.
He said the difference may in part relate to the instruments used to take the blood pressure readings. Some are known to overestimate blood pressure while some give more conservative readings.
Another partial explanation may be the way the readings were taken. In the current study, the children were isolated in an environment designed to be calming in order to reduce the effect of what’s known as “white coat syndrome.”
That’s the name given to the phenomenon that just having a professional take a blood pressure reading elevates the person’s blood pressure.
That means the readings could have been lower than they would have been if taken under normal circumstances.
But those factors can’t account for the entire difference. And Paradis suggested it may just be true that Canadian kids aren’t yet having as much of a blood pressure problem as experts would expect, given the rates of obesity and overweight.
That doesn’t mean those problems aren’t on the horizon if overweight kids and teens don’t modify their lifestyles, he said.
“We should not rest on our laurels,” Paradis said.
“We need to be proactive and vigorously combat the obesity epidemic. Because if we don’t, ultimately many of these kids will become obese adults and will develop the negative effects of obesity including elevated blood pressure and ultimately diabetes, heart attacks and so on.”