Local researcher tags 'tipping point' in overweight children

Those baby-fat dimples may look adorable, but they also could be a sign that an infant might blossom into an overweight teen someday.

A local researcher has tagged age 2 as a "tipping point" when children can begin outweighing their peers on their journey to becoming obese. Some children start outpacing their peers at as early as 3 months old.

Local pediatrician John Harrington was the principal investigator of the study of 111 local children. The information was released in 2008, but it was published by a peer-reviewed medical journal, Clinical Pediatrics, for the first time Thursday.

Harrington, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters and an associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, examined records of 111 children whose body mass index - a measure of weight and height - was more than 85 percent of the general population.

On average, the children began outweighing peers when they were 3 months old. More than half the children became overweight at or before age 2. Ninety percent hit that point before reaching their fifth birthday.

Harrington said it underscores the need for health care providers to flag excess weight much earlier in children's lives, when their brains are first learning how much and what to eat.

"The longer you are overweight, the harder it is to lose it," he said in a recent interview.

The release of the study coincides with first lady Michelle Obama's launch of a national initiative this week, "Let's Move," to combat childhood obesity. An array of public and private organizations will join to help children be more active and eat better.

Many formal weight-management efforts begin when children are school age, but Harrington believes doctors and other health advocates need to start addressing the issues much earlier, through parents.

"If the parents have bad eating habits, kids do what they see their parents do, even as young as 18 months," Harrington said. "Those types of things are ingrained."

A weight-management program at CHKD that used to accept children as young as 8 now includes children as young as 5. The hospital has also developed pamphlets for parents that have tips for children of all ages.

The journal Clinical Pediatrics is peer-reviewed by doctors and academics from hospitals, clinics, private practice and medical schools.

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com