Today’s teenagers have been stereotyped as adventurous and harebrained individuals.  They are generally fond of experimenting with things until they get in touch with drugs, sex, guns, alcohol among others. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, 16,000 young adults die each year from unintentional injuries and accidents.  The most common justification for teenagers’ care-free attitude is that their brains just aren’t developed enough to know better. However, recent research shows that in some cases the fact is just the opposite, the brain matures not too slowly but perhaps, too quickly.

According to a psychiatrist, an adolescent who engages in more dangerous activities have white-matter pathways that seem to be more mature than those of risk-averse youths.  White-matter is the brain’s wiring, the neutral pathways that connect the various gray-matter regions of the cerebrum that are independent of one another.  Having a mature white-matter is necessary because it allows faster brain processing speed.  Nerve impulses also travel faster in mature white-matter. Experiments also reveal that the more mature the look of the brain, the more adventurous the teenager tended to be.
Another possible explanation is that some teenagers whose brains develop more rapidly than others become uncomfortable and a little confused owing to the gap between their biological capabilities and the social norms they must follow as kids. Precocious development of these neural tracts may make some adolescents more susceptible to engage in behaviors that society considers too adult in nature for their chronological age. It is also a common notion that teens make dumb decisions because their brains are immature. In other words, having a more mature brain may actually motivate some teens to try out new and potentially harmful experiences.
For now, these theories are mere speculation, and the researchers concede that the interaction of white and gray matter is so complex that hard conclusions remain elusive. The results of the study are relatively bare and by no means conclusive. The human brain is so intricate in nature, and one has to consider the fact that there are other factors that come into play such as the environment and certain genetic predispositions that are equally complex to study.

Parents worried about their teen’s extra pounds should avoid using the “d word” — diet — because it ultimately backfires, new research shows.

A University of Minnesota study found that overweight teens whose parents urged them to diet were far more likely to still be heavy five years later than hefty adolescents whose parents had said nothing.

“My advice to parents is to stop talking about dieting and weight,” said Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, lead author of the study published this month in the journal Pediatrics.

Surprisingly, the parents who accurately perceived their teens as overweight were no more likely than the other group to engage in positive behaviors to help them manage their weight, she said.

Those parental behaviors include: making more fruit and vegetables — and fewer soft drinks — available at home, increasing the number of meals eaten as a family and giving encouragement to make healthy food choices or be more physically active.

The only difference between the groups was the prodding to diet, said Neumark-Sztainer, author of “I’m, Like, So Fat,” a book to help teens make healthy food and exercise choices.

Source article, click here.

Just over a year ago, around the time of his ninth birthday, Zach Hewitt, a Surrey schoolboy, began doing a few exercises. The odd stomach crunch or bicep curl – nothing too extreme. Then one day he looked in the mirror and decided that he had to do much, much more: he had to get serious about fitness.

“I saw that I was extremely fat compared with what I’d like to be and I ran out of puff a lot more than friends. I looked at myself and thought ‘I didn’t used to look like this; I need to get into shape’. I try my hardest not to be fat because I’m scared of it.”

Getting in shape for Zach meant a grueling daily schedule, which a year later he still maintains. According to his mother Nicci, a part-time graphic designer: “He gets up, has breakfast and goes to school. He comes home and goes straight out to the trampoline where he works out for 45 minutes. Even if it’s raining, even in the depths of winter, he’s out there. After a healthy supper, where he carefully watches what he eats, he will do additional exercises before bed: press-ups, sit-ups and stomach crunches.”

So how fat is Zach? The shocking truth is not at all, not by any stretch of any fattist imagination could he be described as fat. With his shirt off you see Zach’s size for what it really is: spot on for a boy his age, a boy who’s just turned 10 and still fits into his Year 8 or 9-sized clothes. Nicci says that he’s has always been the same: “Zach’s never been fat, he was cuddly as a toddler, but he’s never been a fat child.”

So where has this misplaced belief that he is large come from and why is a normal-looking ten-year-old boy so “scared” of being fat? Andrew Hill, professor of medical psychology at Leeds University and an expert in eating disorders, says that 20 per cent of nine and ten-year-old girls claim that they are dieting to lose weight and twice that number say that they’ve tried it in the past. For boys, who have evidently “always been part of the picture”, the figure is around 5 to 8 per cent and increasing. Hill points out that children are all too aware of how important appearance is and how people are judged on it. “There’s a great emphasis in society on appearance. You see it in magazines, in newspapers, on billboards. You don’t have to be a certain age to understand its importance. It’s reinforced through your peer group, with your parents, with other significant adults.”

Nicci blames magazines and TV: “Most of the role models he sees are muscular men, either models, or guys in boy bands, or wrestlers. Zach wants to be like them and his aim is to get a six-pack. You don’t see many normal people with their tops off in magazines so it’s hard for him to get a view of what’s normal.”

Understandably, Nicci is worried that Zach may “become too obsessed” with his healthy eating and fitness regime, but hopes that she can stop this happening by keeping an eye on him and talking regularly about it to him.

We may be bombarded with statistics concerning childhood obesity, but the number of children suffering from eating disorders is also on the rise. According to government figures, the number of cases of children being admitted to hospital with eating disorders such as anorexia has increased by more than a third over the last 10 years, with 562 girls and 111 boys aged under 18 hospitalized in 2005/06.

And now, a study carried out by Finnish scientists claims 18 percent of school children admit to having eating problems – that’s almost a fifth of all teenagers. However the report (ii), published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, claims that anxiety is more to blame than body image problems.

According to the report, which quizzed 372 students aged between 15 and 17, the teenagers who suffered from anxiety early during their adolescence were 20 times more likely to have eating disorders than those who had not experienced earlier psychological problems. And those who were dissatisfied with the way they looked only had recurring eating problems if they suffered anxiety earlier in their adolescence too.

The researchers also discovered that girls were twice as likely to report eating problems on one occasion than boys, and five times more likely to have ongoing eating problems.

Meanwhile 77 percent of those who admitted having persistent eating problems said they were unhappy with their weight and 46 percent were unhappy with their appearance, compared with eight and 18 percent of those who ate normally. Yet 63 percent of the teens who admitted having eating problems were of normal weight – and 37 percent were actually underweight.

The teenagers who had persistent eating problems were also more likely to report having health problems such as abdominal pain, dizziness, fatigue, headache and insomnia than those without eating problems – that is, 70 percent compared to 40 percent.

Read the full article here.

Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa are the two most popular types of eating disorder, but there are others, which while not common still exist and are rapidly spreading.

Types of eating disorders

Anorexia Nervosa

The name comes from two Latin words that mean nervous inability to eat. In females who have begun to menstruate, anorexia nervosa is usually marked by amenorrhea, or skipping at least three menstrual periods in a row. There are two types of Anorexia Nervosa, restricting type, characterized by strict dieting and exercise without binge eating; and a binge-eating/purging type, marked by episodes of compulsive eating with or without self-induced vomiting and the use of laxatives or enemas.

Bulimia Nervosa

Repeated secretive bouts of excessive eating followed by self-induced vomiting, purging, and anorexia, usually accompanied by feelings of guilt, depression, and self-disgust. A bulimic episode (a binge) is defined as a fit of frenzied overeating in which an excessive amount of food is consumed in a short time; this episode involves a sense of loss of control. They sometimes involve rapid and out-of-control feeding that stops when the bulimic is interrupted by another person or when his/her stomach hurts from over-extension. This cycle may be repeated several times a week or, in serious cases, several times a day.

Bulimia is related to deep psychological issues and feelings of lack of control. Sufferers often use the destructive eating pattern to feel in control over their lives. Bulimics are usually raised in dysfunctional families. Many also display alexithymia, the inability to consciously experience and express emotions.

Starvation Diet

Dieting tends to refer to the process of manipulating food intake and energy output in order to reduce body weight for health or aesthetic reasons. To reduce weight, fewer calories than the body needs are ingested, forcing the body to obtain its energy from fat stores. Extreme calorie restriction, medication or unusual patterns of eating such as restricting food consumption to a single fruit or meal can be dangerous and can have the following side effects:

* Prolonged hunger

* Depression

* Reduced sex drive

* Fatigue

* Irritability

* Fainting

* Sinus problems (especially post-nasal drip)

* Muscle atrophy

* Rashes

* Acidosis

* Bloodshot eyes

* Gallbladder disease

* Seizures

* Malnutrition, possibly leading to death

Binge Eating Disorder

Binge eating disorder (BED) is characterized by a loss of control over eating behaviors. The binge eater consumes unnaturally large amounts of food in a short time period, but unlike a bulimic, does not regularly engage in any inappropriate weight-reducing behaviors (for example, excessive exercise, vomiting, taking laxatives) following the binge episodes. Because of the nature of the disorder, most BED patients are overweight or obese.

Binge eating episodes may act as a psychological release for excessive emotional stress. Other circumstances that may predispose an individual to BED include heredity and mood disorders, such as major depression.

Many BED individuals binge after long periods of excessive dieting; therapy helps normalize this pattern. The initial goal of BED treatment is to teach the patient to gain control over his or her eating behavior by focusing on eating regular meals and avoiding snacking. Initial treatment may focus on curbing the depression that is a characteristic feature of BED.