Unhealthy diets and inactivity contributing to high blood pressure rates amongst children worldwide

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A new study shows the rate of children worldwide living with high blood pressure has nearly doubled in the last 20 years.  Health experts say the increase is because of a toxic combination of unhealthy diets and inactivity. Host of the Health Report Norman Swan has been reviewing the study.

Transcript

00:01It's still not a huge number, but it's significant.

00:04It's gone up to about 6% overall in children.

00:08And people tend not to think of high blood pressure in children

00:11and doctors don't often measure it.

00:13And that's part of the problem here.

00:15Is it a real increase or is it that doctors are getting better

00:18at measuring blood pressure?

00:19Because you've got to be careful about the size of the cuff.

00:21It's very easy to over-diagnose high blood pressure in a child

00:25because your cuff might be too small.

00:27So it's got to be a nice big cuff.

00:29But putting that aside, it probably is, to some extent,

00:32a real increase, whether it's that dimension or not.

00:35And what probably is going on,

00:38because what's happened during that time,

00:39is that children have put on more weight.

00:42So you've got a greater instance of overweight and obesity in childhood.

00:46And that is associated with a higher blood pressure.

00:49It's also associated with greater difficulty in measuring blood pressure,

00:52but it's also associated with higher blood pressure.

00:55The thing about blood pressure in children is,

00:58you don't have a single number like you do in adulthood,

01:01saying, you know, if it's over 130 or 90 or 95,

01:04then your blood pressure is raised.

01:07It's graded according to the age of the child.

01:10But the recommendation is that children should,

01:13every so often when they're visiting the doctor,

01:15have their blood pressure measured.

01:16And if there's any chance that it could be raised,

01:19measuring it at home, at school,

01:22just while the child is out and about,

01:25so that you pick it up if it's there and don't misdiagnose it.

01:28But it does create long-term problems

01:31if the child does have it and it's not treated.

01:33But lifestyle can help it.

01:35But lifestyle can help it.

01:36So losing weight, reducing salt in the diet,

01:39so it can help without medications.

01:41And what are some of those implications?

01:42Is it similar to an adult who has high blood pressure?

01:44Yeah.

01:45Just a higher risk of things like stroke,

01:46coronary heart disease and kidney damage.

01:48OK.

01:49Something to look out for then.

01:50Absolutely.

01:51I want to ask you about physios and dry needling.

01:54Often when people turn up to get a back injury,

01:58a knee injury, whatever looked at,

01:59the physio might offer dry needling.

02:02What is it and how does it compare to acupuncture?

02:04Well, these comparisons are very difficult.

02:07So what dry needling is, why it's called dry,

02:09is that it started off that when you've got a pain,

02:13let's say in a joint or part of your body,

02:15sometimes you can find a spot in the muscle

02:18where it feels like a knot.

02:20So massage therapists often find this

02:22and you jump off the table when they press it.

02:25It's called a myofascial trigger point.

02:27And they, when you massage it,

02:30in fact it can relieve the pain that you've got elsewhere.

02:34Nobody fully understands what's going on.

02:36So people have, at one point people tried injecting local anaesthetic

02:41into the myofascial trigger point and it helped.

02:45That's wet needling.

02:46But then they found that it wasn't actually the local anaesthetic,

02:50it was the needle going in that made the difference.

02:53So that's dry needling.

02:54And the technique is very similar to acupuncture

02:57where you put in a needle.

02:58The problem here is there's different techniques.

03:00So they can go in superficially, deep,

03:03you can leave it in for a while,

03:04you can manipulate it and so on.

03:06And there's argument about whether or not

03:08you actually need to cause a little pain,

03:11like you do with the massage to cause the relief.

03:16The evidence suggests that dry needling can work

03:19by going for that myofascial trigger point.

03:22Won't work in everybody, but it can work.

03:24And it has the same effect as massage.

03:26So it's not any better than massage,

03:28but it has the same sort of effect as massage,

03:30but doesn't help everybody.

03:31With acupuncture, acupuncture,

03:33a lot of acupuncturists will look for the trigger point,

03:36not just the Chinese meridians,

03:38and go for the trigger point as well.

03:40But the act of needling,

03:42particularly if it's a little bit painful,

03:44does distract the painful stimuli

03:47from the place itself.

03:49So there's evidence, for example,

03:50when you do a placebo trial of acupuncture,

03:53the act of the needle going in

03:55can actually make a difference to the pain relief.

03:57So bottom line, both can work.

04:00It's not magic.

04:02So there's something going on there,

04:04but it's not necessarily a long-term solution.

04:07If you've got pain,

04:08you need to find out why you've got pain.

04:10And the thing about dry needling

04:12is when it's associated with physiotherapy,

04:14you get a better effect

04:16than just the dry needling by itself.

04:18Okay. Norman Swan, thank you.

04:19You're welcome.

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