What Can Parents Do to Keep Kids’ Hearts Healthy?
Keeping kids healthy can be a big job. From the day their children are born, parents ferry them to and from medical offices, getting their immune systems boosted, teeth cleaned, eyes checked and stuffy noses decongested. But experts say there’s one body part parents and health care professionals may be overlooking: the heart.
“As a pediatrician, I am very concerned there is not enough attention to the growing problem of cardiovascular disease risks in children and youth,” said Dr. Mona Sharifi, chief of general pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. “We need to think about keeping their hearts healthy.”
Heart disease and stroke are typically considered adult problems. But a growing body of research links cardiovascular events that occur in midlife to risk factors – such as obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking – that begin developing decades earlier, in childhood.
Excerpted from American Heart Association
