Obesity May Be Linked With Childhood Trauma

Obesity associated with childhood trauma.

Time (1/6, Szalavitz) reports that in the late 80's, Dr. Vincent Felitti, founder of Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventive Medicine and director of its obesity-treatment program, "began a systematic study of 286 obese people, and discovered that 50% had been sexually abused as children." His findings, which have since been supported by a series of other studies, have "helped give rise to broader work linking stressful experiences early in life -- as early as in the womb -- to effects on health and behavior later on, such as an increased risk of heart disease or becoming addicted to drugs." The result was the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, which for the past several decades, "has recorded reports of negative childhood experiences in more than 17,000 patients."
Obesity now poses as great a threat to US quality of life as smoking. HealthDay (1/5, Preidt) reported, "Obesity now poses as great a threat to Americans' quality of life as smoking," according to a study to appear in the Feb. issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. After analyzing "1993-2008 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System that included interviews with more than 3.5 million adults," researchers found that "quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) lost to obesity are equal to, or greater than, those lost because of smoking." Notably, "obesity had a larger effect on disease, while smoking had a greater impact on deaths, the researchers found."