Body Mass Index

Ronda Storms is a Republican state senator from Florida. She is also a mom who buys the groceries for her family of four. A few months ago, Storms, 46, started noticing that some fellow shoppers were using federal food stamp money to purchase a lot of...

Mount Prospect's public health nurse Jill Heinking said that after discovering far too many of the Latino families she treated were struggling with obesity, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, she launched bilingual education programs targeting these...

More physical education in kindergarten through fifth grade means less chance of obesity, especially for boys, researchers say. The study provides some of the first evidence of a causal effect between gym and childhood obesity. It is to be published...

Having childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder could lead to a life of obesity, even if ADHD symptoms disappear in adulthood, a new study shows. The study, which followed up on 207 middle-class men who had been diagnosed with ADHD as...

Not so long ago, about one in every 10 adult Floridians was obese. Today, if you line up four Floridians, one of them will be obese. The good news? At least we're not Mississippi, where every third person has a body mass index of 30 or higher —...

Like other fourth-graders at Evanston's King Laboratory School, Jennifer Dreller's daughter was discreetly weighed during gym class as part of a routine fitness assessment. But the experience took a toll on the 10-year-old's self-esteem, her mother...

Michael Jackson sometimes sang during concerts accompanied by his own recorded vocal track to help him perform the most physically strenuous numbers, the choreographer for what was to be his comeback shows in London testified Monday. What is known as...

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: Is it possible to be 30 pounds overweight and still be healthy? My blood pressure and cholesterol are normal, and I have no health issues other than being overweight. ANSWER: Weight is one important measure of health. But it's not...

Have a question for Dr. Blythe? Write to her at AskThePediatrician@tribune.com. For more information on Dr. Blythe, go to pediatricassociates.com. April 29, 2013 Q: My 5-year-old daughter just had her adenoids and tonsils removed because of snoring...

Think of a person with an eating disorder and your first thought will likely be of a college coed. Yet children as young as six and retired seniors are increasingly being treated for eating disorders. Those with eating disorders have the highest...

Re "What we should learn from the 1-800-GET-THIN saga," Column, April 21 Readers should not be left with the impression that patients who underwent weight-loss surgery after seeing an advertisement on a billboard were unaware of the risks. Those...

Lisa Harrison weighed 527 pounds on the day she was fired from her job at a Louisiana drug addiction treatment center. The 5-foot-2-inch Harrison, who believed her employer considered her "disabled" due to her weight, filed a discrimination charge with...