Determination of the Nutritional Status of Children Between the Ages of Four (4) to Ten (10) Years Using Their Body Mass Index (BMI)
Chapter One
AIMS AND OBJECTIVE
Body mass index have been in use over the years by most medical and socioeconomic field of endeavour, but proper analysis together with some statistical importance about BMI have been of limited consideration. The aim of this project is to analyze the health importance of continually measuring the BMI of children.
Secondly, reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is important for overall health and can help you prevent and control many diseases and conditions. If you are overweight or obese, you are at higher risk of developing serious health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, and certain cancers. That is why maintaining a healthy weight is so important:
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
After several years of experience with body mass index (BMI)-for-age reference standards in the US, the UK, and elsewhere, reflection on ‘how things are going’ seems timely. In this issue, a summary of the evidence base for the diagnostic accuracy of BMI in children and the perspective on what is achieved by a definition of overweight and obesity based on high BMI was obtained. To complement this, some basic terms need to be properly defined, which include;BMI measure, BMI percentile, the utility of a BMI z-score (s.d. score), their utility in cross-sectional and longitudinal applications in public health/surveillance, clinical and population-based research settings.
BODY MASS INDEX
Body mass index is a measure of weight adjusted for height. It is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. Although BMI is an imperfect tool – it does not distinguish overweight due to excess fat mass from overweight due to excess lean mass – it is the most commonly used measure for assessing obesity in adults. Other methods of determining adiposity are more accurate, but have limited applicability to screening or studying large populations. The BMI is well correlated with these more direct fatness measures, and weight and height are simple, inexpensive, non-invasive measurements that are recorded routinely in clinical and research settings.
Others have discussed the limitations of clinical screening for high adiposity by comparing weight percentiles to height percentiles, and the inaccuracy of assessing overweight by observation or ‘eye-balling’ has been established. Therefore, for screening or for epidemiologic research, using a weight/height index to define obesity has advantages that outweigh its limitations. Despite the likelihood of misclassification of the small percentage of individuals whose high BMI is due to lean muscle mass (e.g. some professional athletes), the great majority of individuals with high BMI have excess body fat.
Use of body mass index in children and adolescents
The BMI is used to assess weight status in children and adolescents as well as adults, but whereas in adults the BMI cut points that define obesity and overweight are not linked to age and do not differ for males and females, in growing children BMI varies with age and sex. Thus, a 5-year-old boy with a BMI of 20 kg/m2 is likely to be overfat, but a 15-year-old boy with a BMI of 20 kg/m2 is likely to be lean. As a result, for BMI to be meaningful in children it must be compared to a reference-standard that accounts for child age and sex.
CHOICE OF A REFERENCE STANDARD
National and international BMI-for-age reference standards are available. The US BMI-for-age reference is based on nationally representative data from boys and girls ages 2–20 years collected between 1963 and 1980. National reference standards are also in use in the UK, and are under development elsewhere. An international BMI reference has been produced by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) with data from children in the US, UK, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore and Brazil. Controversy exists about whether and under what circumstances a national or international reference standard is best.
BMI PERCENTILE
After BMI is calculated for children and teens, the BMI number is plotted on the CDC BMI-for-age growth charts (for either girls or boys) to obtain a percentile ranking. Percentiles are the most commonly used indicator to assess the size and growth patterns of individual children in the United States. The percentile indicates the relative position of the child’s BMI number among children of the same sex and age. The growth charts show the weight status categories used with children and teens (underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCHMETHODOLOGY
DATA COLLECTION
In this research work primary data method was adopted, the data was obtained as a result of personal measurement of the height and masses of children within the ages of four to ten years, the essence and importance of adopting the primary data approach as a means of obtaining my data was the necessity of making use of
DATA PRESENTATION
The data shows the various heights and masses of 150 male and 150 female children within the ages of four to ten years, randomly measured from a population of over a million children in Imo state.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS
DATA ANALYSISUSING FORMULAR/CALCULATOR
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMENDATION
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Considering the importance of health check status together with measures needed to properly check the nutritional proficiency of diets being consumed by most children within the ages of four to ten year, using the BMI analysis the following was obtained;
Body mass index analysis as a means of nutritional status determination for children between the ages of four to ten years might not be the most reliable means of nutritional status determination, but has a high degree of precision in analysis of health status determination.
Among other means of nutritional status determination in children, the BMI analysis was discovered as being the most economical and fastest means of health status determination.
The method of calculating the BMI is dependent on age-sex specification; for children it is usually calculated using the percentile chart, with specifications that children who’s BMI value is below the 5th percentile are under weight, those in between the 5th to 85 percentile have a normal weight, and those in between 85th to 95th percentile are overweight, while those above 95th percentile are obsessed. While for adults a specific standard is being used as yard stick for health status classification and it is independent on age or sex.
CONCLUSION
Height and weight are simple and ubiquitous measures and have historically formed the basis of growth monitoring. Body mass index, which shows reasonably good correlations with more direct measures of adiposity and consistent linkages with adult overweight- and obesity-related co-morbidities, will likely continue to be the main measure of weight status in children. It is doubtful that we will gain much by further refinement of algebraic manipulations of height and weight. A more direct measure that reflects adiposity would be preferable, but the current alternatives are poorly suited to clinical or population research applications. Bioelectric impedance, arguably the most appealing proxy measure of adiposity for field use, is sensitive to hydration status, may vary by ethnicity, and requires instrument- and population-specific equations.
Addition of an anthropometric indicator of central adiposity has been suggested. Several reference standards for waist circumference and waist–hip ratio have been developed and evidence is accumulating to suggest that these measures in combination with BMI may have utility for identification of those children whose high BMI has greatest health impact. The waist height ratio also shows some promise as useful measure of size-adjusted central adiposity. The addition of circumferential measures may help to address the major weakness of BMI: its inability to distinguish between elevated adiposity and elevated lean mass. From a public health perspective, the observation that from 1987 to 1997 waist circumferences of British children increased more than BMI suggests that surveillance by BMI alone may obscure important changes in body composition at the population level. Prospective studies that demonstrate that the addition of an indirect measure of central adiposity is more tightly linked to obesity-related health consequences than use of BMI-for-age alone would provide some of the justification needed to add further complexity to research applications and to weight-screening recommendations. As the evidence accrues, BMI-for-age continues to offer a valid and readily available measure for use in clinical and population-based applications. Widespread adoption of BMI-for-age in all three sectors will depend upon continued efforts to train individuals in the appropriate use of national and international growth references.
RECOMMENDATIONS
With respect to the fact that BMI are of great significance in the determination of child’s/adult nutritional status, I recommend that more research works should be done on the analysis of the BMI calculation parameters through the collaboration of the government, world health organization (WHO), and other non-governmental health organizations in other to control the limitations associated with the BMI approach as a means of health status determination.
Since the body mass index operation those not require any medical professional techniques, I recommend that parents and guardians should always adopt this means in continually examining the status of their kids, and this will help them in rationalizing their children daily diet.
REFERENCES
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- CDC Nutrition and Physical Activity CDC Growth Chart Training June 22, 2005. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/growthcharts/training/modules/index.htm.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC Growth Charts: United States. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts.
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