(Press-News.org) Children as young as ten are making themselves vomit in order to lose weight and the problem is more common in boys than girls, according to a study of nearly 16,000 school pupils published online early, ahead of print publication, by the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
The findings have prompted researchers to issue a warning that self-induced vomiting is an early sign that children could develop eating disorders and serious psychological problems, such as binge eating and anorexia.
They also believe that self-induced vomiting can be tackled by making sure that children get enough sleep, eat breakfast every day, eat less fried food and night-time snacks and spend less time in front of a computer.
Thirteen per cent of the 8,673 girls and 7,043 boys who took part in the research admitted they made themselves sick to lose weight. But the figures were much higher in younger children, with 16% of 10-12 year-olds and 15% of 13-15 year-olds vomiting. The figures fell to 8% in 16-18 year-olds.
The study of 120 schools, carried out for Taiwan's Ministry of Education, also found that 16% of the boys made themselves sick, compared with 10% of the girls.
"Our study, which was part of a wider research project on health and growth, focused on children who said that they had tried to lose weight in the last year" says lead author Dr Yiing Mei Liou, Director of Clinical Practice of the School of Nursing at National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan.
"It showed that self-induced vomiting was most prevalent in adolescents who had a sedentary lifestyle, slept less and ate unhealthily.
"Obesity is a growing problem in industrialised countries and is an increasingly important medical, psychosocial and economic issue. It's estimated that obesity among children and teenagers has nearly tripled over the last three decades and international studies have revealed worrying trends.
"For example, a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in 2010, found that 4% of students had vomited or taken laxatives in the last 30 days to lose or stop gaining weight. And a South Australian study published in 2008 said that eating disorders had doubled in the last decade."
The Taiwan study found that 18% of the underweight children used vomiting as a weight-loss strategy, compared with 17% of obese children and 14% of overweight children. Normal weight children were least likely to vomit (12%).
A number of factors were associated with high levels of self-induced vomiting. For example, more than 21% of the children who vomited ate fried food every day, 19% ate desserts every day, 18% ate night-time snacks every day and 18% used a computer screen for more than two hours a day.
When the researchers carried out an odds ratio analysis, they found that using a computer screen for more than two hours a day increased the vomiting risk by 55%, eating fried food every day by 110% and having night-time snacks every day by 51%. They also found that children were less likely to make themselves sick if they slept more than eight hours a night and ate breakfast every day.
"Our study found that children as young as ten were aware of the importance of weight control, but used vomiting to control their weight" concludes Dr Liou. "This reinforces the need for public health campaigns that stress the negative impact that vomiting can have on their health and encourage them to tackle any weight issues in a healthy and responsible way.
"The findings also suggest that self-induced vomiting might serve as an early marker for the development of obesity and/or other eating and weight-related problems."
###
Notes to Editors
Prevalence and correlates of self-induced vomiting as weight-control strategy among adolescents in Taiwan. Liou et al. Journal of Clinical Nursing. Online early ahead of print publication. (June 2011). DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2011.03739.x
The Journal of Clinical Nursing (JCN) is an international, peer reviewed, scientific journal that seeks to promote the development and exchange of knowledge that is directly relevant to all spheres of nursing and midwifery practice. The primary aim is to promote a high standard of clinically related scholarship which supports the practice and discipline of nursing. JCN publishes high quality papers on issues related to clinical nursing, regardless of where care is provided. This includes - but is not limited to - ambulatory care, community care, family care, home, hospital, practice, primary and secondary, and public health. http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/JOCN
Wiley-Blackwell is the international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, with strengths in every major academic and professional field and partnerships with many of the world's leading societies. Wiley-Blackwell publishes nearly 1,500 peer-reviewed journals and 1,500+ new books annually in print and online, as well as databases, major reference works and laboratory protocols. For more information, please visit www.wileyblackwell.com or our new online platform, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary collections of online resources, covering life, health, social and physical sciences, and humanities.
END
An international research team led by Japan and that includes the University of Colorado Boulder may have taken a significant step in discovering why matter trumped antimatter at the time of Big Bang, helping to create virtually all of the galaxies and stars in the universe.
The experiment, known as the Tokai to Kamioka experiment, or T2K, included shooting a beam of neutrinos underground from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, or J-PARC, on the country's east coast to a detector near Japan's west coast, a distance of about 185 miles. Elementary particles ...
The summer holidays are prime opportunities for police to step up driving under the influence (DUI) enforcement, and Memorial Day was no exception. Across the country, DUI checkpoints were in place over the long weekend to deter and catch drunk drivers. But, a new software application, or app, widely available for cell-phone users has some rethinking the efficacy of DUI checkpoints.
Early Warning for Drivers
DUI checkpoints are temporary sites set up on roads and highways where law-enforcement officers stop every vehicle to check for signs of driver intoxication. ...
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – One in 10 women experience depression during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth. Although the problem has received increased attention in recent years, little is known about the causes or early-warning signs of pregnancy-related depression. In a study published in the June 2011 issue of Journal of Women's Health, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine offer new clues to help doctors identify at-risk patients and refer them to treatment early on.
The researchers surveyed 158 pregnant and postpartum women ...
A cancer diagnosis is not necessarily a death sentence. There are now quite a number of possibilities to treat cancer. In addition to radiotherapy and chemotherapy, so-called radionuclide treatment has also become an important component in the fight against the mutated cells. It involves injecting radioactive elements, so-called nuclides, into the patient's circulatory system. Bonded to special molecules which preferentially attach themselves to cancer cells, the nuclides are pumped through the body by the heart until they finally find their target: a cancer cell. Having ...
If you were injured in a car accident or other serious accident and Medicare paid some of your health bills, your personal injury lawsuit may include reimbursing Medicare for those payments. This is because Medicare has a legal right to reimbursement for the "conditional payments" it provides to injured Medicare recipients. If Medicare is not reimbursed, the government can take legal action against the defendants (insurance companies), the plaintiffs and even the plaintiffs' attorneys.
That is exactly what happened in U.S. v. Stricker, a federal court action ...
Calculating child support during a divorce or custody proceeding can be a challenge. The Oregon Child Support Guidelines use each parent's gross income to establish the child support amount ordered in each case. Often, such as in cases where a parent is self-employed, there may be a dispute about how much income a parent actually earns each year.
A recent Oregon Court of Appeals case, In Re: Matter of Marriage of Mathews, illustrates the challenge a court can face when presented with this issue.
The Administrative Law Judge's Calculation of Gross Income
In this ...
The new tool allows users to perform a self-assessment against the Principles and Criteria of the RSB and a self-risk assessment. The online tool also calculates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of biofuels for each lifecycle production step, from farming to final fuel distribution; this calculation can be done according to various methodologies. The development of the new tool, which is directly accessible (free of charge) at http://buiprojekte.f2.htw-berlin.de:1339/, took about two years and was supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
The ...
A breakthrough in genetic research has uncovered the defect behind a rare hereditary children's disease that inhibits the body's ability to break down vitamin D. This discovery has led researchers to develop the first genetic and biochemical tests that positively identify the disease.
Idiopathic Infantile Hypercalcemia (IIH) is among the top ten most common inherited diseases. The researchers estimate that one in every 47,000 people – around 600 Canadians and 6,000 Americans – may suffer from IIH, but there was no way until now of confirming the diagnosis.
"Developing ...
Access Legal from Shoosmiths, the national consumer legal services provider, has announced it has hired Nicholas Tubb as its new partner in the medical negligence team.
Tubb has joined Access Legal from Challinors' clinical negligence department and will be based in Access Legal's Birmingham office.
Tubb has considerable experience in the sector and has specialised in medical negligence claims on behalf of patients and their families for more than 10 years, with a particular interest in complex cases and a wide experience of claims involving surgical errors and ...
Bethesda, Md. (June 16, 2011) – Coaches, physiologists and athletes alike will attest to the importance of warming up before athletic competition. Warming up increases muscle temperature, accelerates oxygen uptake kinetics and increases anaerobic metabolism, all of which enhance performance. However, the question of how long and strenuous a warm-up should be is more contentious, with some in the sports community advocating longer warm-ups and others espousing shorter ones. Now researchers at the University of Calgary Human Performance Laboratory in Calgary, Alberta, Canada ...
