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.

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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.

Teens who think they’re fat but are actually of normal weight have a lower quality of life than those who are obese but believe they’re of normal weight, new research suggests.

A German study of 7,000 teens between 11 and 17 years old found that 55 per cent of girls and just under 36 per cent of boys thought they were too fat in responses to a questionnaire. The study was based on data obtained between 1995 and 1998.

Only about 18 per cent of the teens surveyed were actually overweight, while 7.5 per cent were underweight. Despite that, just 36.6 per cent of the girls said they felt their weight was “just right,” while 44.1 per cent of boys felt the same way.

Conversely, 60.6 per cent of obese girls and 32.2 per cent of obese boys said they think of themselves as “far too fat.”

Obesity is considered having a body mass index of over 30, according to Canadian standards.

Looking at those teens who consider themselves overweight but aren’t, compared with those who are obese but believe their weight is just right, brings out quality of life disparities.

“A comparison of the quality of life scales of the group of adolescents who consider their weight ‘just right’ with those of the subjectively ‘far too fat’ participants reveals drastic differences,” the study reads.

Physically, obese girls had more health issues than boys, the study found. Physical issues connected to being overweight were high blood pressure, as well as high blood cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Obese girls also had more issues with self-esteem than obese boys, according to the research.

On the other hand, obese boys had fewer friends than their normal-weight peers and than obese girls.

But the teens of normal weight who reported they were “too fat” had severe self-esteem issues, particularly girls, and an “enormously impaired” psychological quality of life, according to the researchers. They also note that although among obese girls, family life isn’t very affected, familial quality of life among the girls who believe they are too fat is significantly worsened.

“The question arises, however, whether it is necessary for obese children and adolescents to achieve a realistic body self-image in order to promote a willingness to change if the price of this achievement is impaired quality of life,” the authors write.

The researchers also debate whether anti-obesity campaigns aimed at adolescents are doing more harm than good by making normal-weight teens feel more insecure and unhappy about their bodies and potentially leading to eating disorders.

The study is published in the June 6 issue of the online journal Deutsches Aerzteblatt International.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reported by the National Center for Health Statistics has tracked an increase in obesity among children since 1963. The survey uses actual physical exams on a stratified, multistage probability sample of the civilian non institutionalized U.S. population. The findings identify a relatively stable overweight population from the 1960s to 1980. However, from 1980 to 2004, using the same criteria, the percent of obese children ages 6-11 increased from 6.5 percent to 18.8 percent and the 12-19 year age group increased from 5 percent to 17.4 percent.

In the past, Type 2 diabetes was considered an adult disease with onset often occurring after age 40. According to the Centers for Disease Control, clinically-based reports and regional studies suggest that Type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents, although still rare, is being diagnosed more frequently, particularly in African-Americans, Hispanic/Latino-Americans and American Indians. Obesity is the most common contributing factor.

Overweight children are also at greater risk for future adverse health conditions including hypertension, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease, stroke and gall bladder disease to name a few. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 80 percent of obese teens become obese adults. If not treated, childhood obesity might lead to additional medical conditions during adulthood, including asthma, coronary artery disease, pulmonary disease and increased mortality rates.