Overweight people with big abdomens are in much worse health than are equally obese people whose fat is distributed around the hips and limbs, Medical World News (26#3:74) reports.
In people who are equally overweight, abdominal obesity carries about five times as much risk of heart attack and stroke as does fat deposited elsewhere. Fat in the abdomen, apparently, is much more “active”, so far as the body’s chemistry is concerned, than fat elsewhere. It is associated with elevation of the blood cholesterol levels, sluggishness of fat disposal by the liver, and impairment of insulin secretion in response to sugary meals.
The easiest way to determine a fat person’s degree of risk from this type of obesity, according to the News, is to measure the circumferences both the waist and hips. When the waist-to-hips ratio is above 1.0 in men, or above 0.8 in women, the risk of heart attack and stroke is five to 10 times greater than normal.
Men, it has been found, are more prone than women to abdominal obesity, even though in general, they are less likely to be overweight. Beer drinkers had better beware.
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Emergency symptoms: Choking; inability to breathe or cry
Emergency treatment: Call police or paramedic squad.
Symptoms: Gagging; pain in throat or chest; difficulty swallowing; abdominal pain; vomiting
Home care:
A small, smooth object that the child has swallowed should pass out of the body in the stool without treatment; examine the stools until the object is passed.
In the case of a larger object, examine each stool to see if the object has been passed. If it does not appear within one week, notify the doctor.
- Do not give the child a laxative in an effort to speed passage of a swallowed object.
- No medication or other agent is available to speed up or make safer the passage of a swallowed object through the system.
- An object lodged in the oesophagus must be removed promptly, preferably by a doctor.
- Any object that has not left the body within one week should be reported to the doctor.
Over 95 percent of the cent-size foreign objects that are swallowed by children cause no trouble and pass from the body in the child’s stool. However, objects that are larger may become lodged in the oesophagus (the tube through which food passes on its way to the stomach). Sharp objects (pins, needles, bones, matchsticks, nails, glass splinters) may lodge in the tonsils, throat, or oesophagus. Objects longer than a toothpick may not be able to pass out of the stomach and may have to be removed surgically.
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