By Sharon Kirkey, National Post
They can’t bend over to tie their own shoes. They wake at night gasping for breath because of the fatty folds pressing on their airways. Some have bowed legs, enlarged hearts or the fat-engorged livers of alcoholics.
Canada’s obesity epidemic is damaging some children so badly that surgeons are turning to an aggressive remedy once reserved for adults: weight-loss surgery.
The list of illnesses they confront — afflictions that were once only seen in adults — keeps growing: “adult-onset” Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, cyst-filled ovaries in girls and, for both sexes, psychological torment and bullying. As more children develop “severe complex obesity,” doctors say the only option left for many is to expand access to stomach-shrinking operations for children and adolescents as young as 12.
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