Doctor introdues new weight management program for kids
By Anna Krejci, Green Bay News-Chronicle
http://www.greenbaynewschron.com/pa...?article=124580
Childhood obesity is becoming a major concern in the medical community as Americans fatten up at alarming rates.
On Wednesday, Stephen Sondike, a published expert in overweight issues among adolescents, offered his research on the matter at a gathering of medical professionals at the Bellin Health Administrative Building.
Sondike is the program director of a multidisciplinary overweight-prevention program that he says is badly needed given sharp increases in the number of overweight children. Sondike said he believes that society, not genetics, is responsible for the nation's weight crisis.
"If you have a predisposition to becoming overweight and don't pay constant attention, you're going to become overweight," he said.
Since the 1970s, the obesity grade has nearly tripled in children. That kind of change over a period of 20 years cannot be attributed to an evolution in genetics, he said.
An unhealthful diet can have short-term effects, not just long-term effects thought to occur in adults 40 years of age or older.
According to the Borgalusa Heart Study, children as young as 5 years old have shown coronary artery and aortic plaques, Sondike said.
In one of Sondike's studies, published in March 2003 in the Journal of Pediatrics, he finds that low-carbohydrate diets are not harmful to kids, help kids lose more weight and receive better compliance from kids than does a low-fat diet. Data collected over a 12-week period showed kids on the low-carbohydrate diet lost weight without increasing the risk of heart attack or cardiovascular disease. Kids complied with the low-carbohydrate diet better than they did with the low-fat diet, and Sondike attributes good compliance with allowing the kids to eat foods they liked.
A low-carbohydrate plan is one option for kids enrolled in a new program designed especially for children referred by their pediatricians. Sondike is the program director of the Nutrition, Exercise and Weight Management Kids Program at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. A similar program is being established in Neenah. The programs provide kids with a team of a psychologist, nurse practitioner, dietitian and medical professionals and offers activities through the YMCA.
"I think the affiliation with the Y is very exciting," Sondike said.
Sondike, who moved to Wisconsin from New York, said, "It takes an exciting program to move a New Yorker out to Wisconsin."
He knows of less than 10 programs in the country that offer a multidisciplinary endeavor such as the NEW Kids Program which has dedicated one facet of the program to preventing kids from becoming overweight. Because insurance companies do not typically pay for prevention tactics, Sondike said, "This is going to be a money-losing proposition for the hospital."
"We don't believe in diets," he said. Rather the program emphasizes weight management, which Sondike defined as making healthy choices about food intake throughout a lifetime. Most kids grow into their weight so they do not necessarily need to lose weight, he said.
One weight management plan divides food into three categories and the third category is comprised of foods kids can eat whenever they are hungry, such as baked fish, skinless fowl, low-starch vegetables and fruits.
The program will accommodate children by designing individual weight management strategies, he said. The program also requires that a parent accompany their child to a series of 12 weekly sessions, followed by several monthly meetings.
He advocated shopping the perimeters of a grocery store - the produce and whole foods - as opposed to the middle where the Fritos, Doritos and sodas are found.
"I'd rather have a kid eat steak than a low-fat cookie," he said.
Furthermore, eating slowly helps your body to know when it is full. If one eats too quickly, hormonal changes in the brain and stomach do not have sufficient time to send a message to your body when it is full, Sondike said.
Sondike is a doctor at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin who specializes in gastroenterology and pediatrics. He is board certified in pediatrics and pediatric adolescent medicine and received his education and training from the State University of New York in Brooklyn from 1990-1994. The visit to Green Bay was sponsored in part by the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
"Doctor introdues new weight management program for kids"
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