A group of local researchers have found a causal link between childhood obesity and the development of asthma, contradicting the established belief that it is childhood asthma that leads to excessive weight gain in children.
The group came to the conclusion after conducting a study titled “Pathway from central obesity to childhood asthma” and urged parents to ensure their children are not developing a sedentary lifestyle in which they spend too much time looking at a screen.
Starting in 2010, the study followed the development of approximately 2,800 fourth to sixth-graders for three years. The researchers observed the children and collected data annually on their physical fitness, obesity measures, sedentary time and pulmonary function.
The study was conducted by six researchers, including associate professors at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine Yungling Leo Lee (李永凌) and Chen Yang-ching (陳揚卿), as well as physician Huang Kuo-chin (黃國晉) from the university hospital’s Department of Family Medicine.
Their findings were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine on May 15.
“The research found that participants spent an average of 6.9 hours a day engaged in sedentary behaviors and 2.9 hours looking at screens,” Chen told a press conference at the university in Taipei on Tuesday.
The data also showed that schoolchildren with poor physical fitness are 1.87 times more likely to develop abdominal obesity than those with an adequate level of fitness and that young children who spend more than two hours a day using digital devices are 1.26 times more at risk of developing this type of obesity, Chen said.
Chen said the group employed three distinct statistical analysis methods to process the three years of data that they collected and the results strongly suggest that gaining too much abdominal weight antedates the development of asthma.
“The conclusion of the analysis overthrows the long-held belief that asthmatic children are more susceptible to obesity because their physical activity is often restricted,” Chen said.
“On the contrary, it is obesity that leads to a decrease in children’s pulmonary function, inflaming the body and altering hormones, thereby causing asthma,” the researcher added.
Huang said parents were advised to not only pay close attention to their children’s physical fitness, but also encourage them to do at least one hour of moderate to high-intensity exercise a day.
“In addition, parents should also limit the amount of time their kids spend on sedentary activities and using devices with screens, reduce their sugar intake, and increase their fruit and vegetable consumption,” Huang said. “These measures are essential for helping prevent asthma in children.”
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS