11:58 AM
Anonymous
Youngsters who are persistently overweight may not perform as well academically -- specifically in math -- as their normal-weight peers, new research suggests.
Although the study didn't find a direct cause-and-effect relationship between being overweight or obese and school performance, the researchers did find that children who started kindergarten carrying extra weight and were still heavy when they finished fifth grade performed worse on math tests.
"These children are not necessarily less smart, but they're performing less well," said the study's lead author, Sara Gable, an associate professor and state extension specialist in nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri, in Columbia.
Gable said she suspects interpersonal troubles and internalizing behaviors may be why weight can affect math performance.
"We know, in general, that children who have poor peer relationships don't do as well at school," she said. "And we also know that children with internalizing behaviors don't do as well. Internalizing behaviors are anxiety, worry, not feeling as if they have a lot of friends and feeling sad.
Children with weight problems tend to feel internalizing behaviors and not have good interpersonal skills," she added.
Gable said that these effects, year over year, are likely cumulative.
Nancy Copperman, director of public health initiatives at North Shore-LIJ Health System in Great Neck, N.Y., said the study demonstrates the importance of preventing childhood obesity.
"Obesity isn't just a cosmetic problem," she said. "It has impacts that go from chronic disease to mental achievement, and ultimately to income and a happy, successful, well-adjusted life."
Results of the study appear in the July/August issue of the journal Child Development.
For the study, Gable and her colleagues used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal study. The current study included 6,250 youngsters from kindergarten through fifth grade. Weight and height were measured at five points throughout the study, and the measurements were used to calculate the children's body-mass index, a figure that assesses whether someone is normal weight, overweight or underweight.
The children were placed into one of three groups based on their weight: never overweight (80 percent of the children), persistently overweight (12 percent) or later-onset overweight (8 percent). The later-onset group was not overweight in kindergarten or first grade, but was overweight in third or fifth grade (or both).
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