Exercise is a Medicine and a Vaccination for Preventing Childhood Obesity

Abstract

The most recent report on the obesity epidemic . Institute of Medicine has painted a bleak picture of reality. It reports that two third of adults and almost one third of children are either overweight or obese by any counts of measures. Situations in other countries do not seem optimistic either. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the numbers of obese children have increased during the last decade to an estimated 35 million in developing countries and 8 million in developed countries worldwide. childhood overweight and obesity rates increased by approximately five-fold from 1985 to 2000.3Recent statistics show that 20.3% and 13.4% boys we reclassified as overweight or obese, respectively; while 13.5%and 4.1% of the girls were overweight or obese. There is consensus about the obesity epidemic and its devastating consequence on children across the countries. Similarly there is consensus on how to address it: promoting healthy nutrition and increasing physical activity. There is, however, little philosophical consensus on how these approaches can be most effectively used in dealing with childhood obesity. One philosophical orientation is the treatment position. A typical representation of this position is manifested in the popular metaphor of “Exercise is medicine”. The other is a not-so-popular orientation with rarely-heard metaphor “Exercise is vaccine”. Although the two may be connected in some way (e.g., one can argue vaccine is medicine too), they are fundamentally different in terms of intervention timing and subsequent health and behavior outcomes. There is no doubt that both are needed in addressing the childhood obesity epidemic. But each can lead to personal and social consequences different from those of the other