ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A new study by doctors at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital shows parents and pediatricians may not be doing enough to encourage kids to live healthy lifestyles.
The study looked at three types of kids: healthy weight, overweight and obese. Then, they checked in with those same kids 11 years later.
They found was the healthy weight kids were not living as healthy a lifestyle as the overweight and obese kids. Doctors believe that pediatricians spent more time counseling the overweight kids on certain behaviors, rather than healthy weight kids.
Dr. Raquel Hernandez led the study.
"Almost sort of like this idea that they're healthy, I don't need to have a conversation because I'm so busy with the rest of the encounter and just sort of assuming that those healthy weight children did not trigger that red flag, that they're okay so I'm going to talk about other stuff," Hernandez said.
She says doctors still need to talk to healthy weight children and encourage them to keep a healthy lifestyle and families need to realize there are some key things to think about that can keep everyone on track.
Dr. Hernadez breaks it down like this:
-Nine hours of sleep a night
-Five servings of fruits and vegetables per day
-Two hours of screen time
-One hour of physical activity
-Almost 0 sugary beverages.
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