Investigation of the Factors Affecting the Formation of 6-18 Years School-Age Children Obesity

INTRODUCTION: Obesity is becoming one of the important problems of the community and individual health because of different factors such as
false nutrition and low physical aktivity. Although incidence of obesity is higher in USA and EU compared to Turkey, nowadays it is increasing especially in cities. For healthy generation causes of obesity must be well studied and suggestions for the solution
must be developed. Unfortunately, obesity in childhood is ignored by their families but they must be made aware that obesity may be the cause of a serious illness in the future. Therefore, in this study we aimed to determine the causes of the childhood obesity.
METHODS: Patients visiting Hospital outpatient clinic aging between 6-18 without any known chronic metabolic disease were included to our
study. 109 obese as study group and 109 non-obese as control group were chosen. Obesity was described by using percentile curve developed for Turkish children depending on BMI, gender and age, over 95. percentile.
RESULTS: According to the results mean values of existence of obese member in the family, weight and BMI values of both parents, duration for eating, physical training, fastfood and vegetable consumption in a week, daily sleep time, feeding time and skipped meals were significantly different between two groups (p<0,05). Smoking during pregnancy, duration time on television-computer, parents education
and working status were statistically not significant between the groups (p>0,05).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The incidence of obesity is increasing in our community, therefore to prevent it, we have to lean on child nutrition plus routine physical activity.