At Risk Youth

A community group in Redlands, Calif., is shifting its approach to underage drinking. Rather than informing young people about the dangers of drinking, the group is educating adults on the consequences of providing young people with alcohol.

“The RPC [Redlands Prevention Coalition] is working to create a ’social host’ ordinance in Redlands,” the Redlands Daily Facts newspaper reported. “The law could empower police to cite hosts of underage drinking parties with civil or criminal violations. Police could also levy fines for the cost of law enforcement services needed to enforce the ordinance against hosts who do not comply with the law.”

Other cities in the area have adopted similar laws and seen them work. The RPC is currently drafting legislation that it hopes to put in front of lawmakers soon.

Childhood trauma may cause some adults gain weight and have difficulty losing it, according to a new study of more than 17,000 patients in the Kaiser Permanente health system.

In 1987 Dr. Vincent Felitti studied 286 obese people in the Kaiser system and found that 50% had been sexually abused as children, a much higher rate than average. He decided to look into other kinds of childhood trauma that may be linked to overweight, and began to investigate previous studies.

• One study of more than 11,000 women found that those who had been abused as children were 27 percent more likely to be overweight.
• A study of 15,000 teenagers found that sexual childhood abuse in males raised their risk of obesity as adults to 66 percent.
• Dr. Felitti then began the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study involving a database of over 17,000 Kaiser patients.

Dr. Felitti and his colleagues defined adverse experience as ongoing childhood neglect, living with one or no biological parent, having a mentally ill or drug addicted parent, having a parent in jail, witnessing domestic violence, and sexual, physical or emotional abuse. Children who had four or more of these experiences had double the risk of obesity, double the risk of heart attack and stroke, and four times the risk for emphysema.

Dr. Felitti and others believe that food is a comforting escape for abused children.

“Being fat is not the problem,” he said. “It’s the solution.”

What’s more troubling about the study is that some researchers believe that adverse experiences in childhood can lead to permanent biological changes in certain areas of the body, and that such changes are passed down from one generation to the next.