Kids turn couch potatoes, grow obese

LUDHIANA: If your kids are complaining of health problems and growing obese, keep a tab on their television viewing habits. A study conducted by the paediatric department of Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) reveals that 80% children eat food while watching television, which leads to them becoming overweight. Frequent headache and impaired vision were other common problems among children.
The study was conducted on 500 children ' 327 boys and 173 girls ' from different areas of the city including posh localities like Sarabha Nagar, Gurdev Nagar, Kitchlu Nagar, Model Town, Rishi Nagar, BRS Nagar and SBS Nagar.
Varughese Plavelil Varkey, a paediatrician at CMCH, said they had conducted the study to find out the basic reasons for the increasing health problems among children due to their television viewing habits. ''We found that children tend to eat more while watching television,'' he said.
Dr Varkey said the study, which was conducted on children in the age group of 3 to 15 years, found that 80% watch TV for 2 hours daily during week days while 18% watched for 2-3 hours and 2.4% for over 3 hours. On weekends 65% watch TV for 2-5 hours and 31% watch for up to 2 hours.
''Obesity has become quite common among children as 80% of them eat their meals while watching television and 73% of them eat fast food while watching television, 7% have sleep disturbance, 5.2% and 3.2% children suffer from defective vision and headache respectively,'' he said, adding that that these kids also suffer chronic or neurological illness. ''When children cut on playtime and watch TV it leads to other problems like aggressive behaviour and violence. Academic performance, self image and sexuality also gets affected by it,'' Dr Varkey informed.
He suggested that as a preventive measure parents should keep an eye on the television viewing habits of their kids. ''As of now only 39% kids watching TV do so under parental guidance because of which the remaining develop chronic problems,'' the paediatrician said.