In one generation, overweight and obesity triples in kids,making for higher risk of heart disease as adults.

Between the mid-1980s and 2008 – the span of just one generation – the prevalence of overweight and obese children has tripled. According to the American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 31.9% of U.S. children and adolescents are now overweight or obese. (About 16% of all children and teens in the U.S. have zoomed beyond just being overweight and are officially obese.) As the AHA puts it, “The cardiovascular fallout from this epidemic in the decades ahead will challenge the healthcare system.”

Two pieces of good news:

• Children’s Hospital, Denver: Heart function improves quickly after morbidly obese teens undergo bariatric surgery, and continues to improve for at least 2 years.

• University of Leipzig Heart Center, Germany: Regular exercise narrows the fitness gap between students from different backgrounds. Specifically, adding an exercise program to a high school curriculum dramatically improves physical fitness levels in teens from lower socio-economic backgrounds. (These kids started out with significantly higher body mass index and lower lean body mass, as well as poorer results in cardio-respiratory fitness testing compared to kids from higher income areas. This gap was reduced with the addition of an exercise program to school curriculums.)