New guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that childhood obesity be treated early with surgery and medicine.
“Although providing patient-centered and non-stigmatizing nutrition and activity counseling is important for children of all weight classifications, there is no evidence to support either watchful waiting or unnecessary delay of appropriate treatment of children who have already developed obesity,” the report, authored by a team of scientists and doctors, read.
They argue that physicians should offer weight-loss drugs, in conjunction with healthy behavior and lifestyle adjustments, to adolescents 12 and older and weight-loss surgery to teenagers 13 and older who are obese. In some contexts, children ages eight through eleven years of age with obesity may require pharmacotherapy, or the administering of drugs,” according to medication indications, risks, and benefits,” the guidelines say.
Example of weight loss surgeries for pediatric patients include a gastric bypass, by which parts of the stomach are reconstructed, and a vertical sleeve gastrectomy, by which the stomach is reduced to a small percentage of its original size. The report lists a number of drugs that could be prescribed including their adverse side effects.
In the last few years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been accused of politicizing its mission by advocating for youth gender transition procedures and therapy, masking for toddlers during the pandemic, and booster Covid-19 vaccinations for 12-year-olds, a statistically low-risk demographic for the disease.
In June 2022, the organization published a report claiming that the term “breast-feeding” should be avoided so as not to offend men who identify as women who lack that natural capacity.
“Children of gender-diverse parents may have less access to human milk because of both social and biological constraints. Breastfeeding is used throughout this document; however the word ‘breastfeeding’ itself may be both triggering, and less accurate, for gender-diverse parents, who may prefer the term ‘chestfeeding,’ which is more inclusive of lactation in the context of varying physiologic anatomies,” the AAP wrote.
In its recent guidelines, the AAP suggests that obesity is an ailment that can be independent of eating choices and lifestyle habits and more dependent on biological factors. The guidelines intend to correct the false narrative that obesity is “a personal problem, maybe a failure of the person’s diligence,” Dr. Sandra Hassink, medical director for the AAP Institute for Healthy Childhood weight, and a co-author of the guidelines, told the Associated Press. “This is not different than you have asthma and now we have an inhaler for you.”
About 20 percent of children and teenagers in the U.S. are afflicted with obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 1976 and 1980, 5 percent of adolescents aged 12-19 struggled with obesity. That number jumped to 18.1 percent in 2007-2008, the CDC found.