Obese kids have prematurely aged neck arteries

More on nutritional child abuse.

"The neck arteries of obese children and teens look more like those of 45-year-olds, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's annual meeting.

'There's a saying that 'you're as old as your arteries,' meaning that the state of your arteries is more important than your actual age in the evolution of heart disease and stroke,' Dr. Geetha Raghuveer noted in a written statement. 'We found that the state of the arteries in these children is more typical of a 45-year-old than of someone their own age.'...

The investigators found that the children's 'vascular age' -- the age at which the level of thickening would be normal for their gender and race -- was about 30 years older than their actual age.

"Too bad that the kids' intellectual ages are probably close to the same as their abusive parents - about 30 years younger than their actual age.