WHO's Child Growth Standards 

The new World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards confirm that children born anywhere in the world and given the optimum start in life, have the potential to develop within the same range of height and weight. Although there are individual differences among children, the WHO confirms that across large populations, regionally and globally, the average growth is remarkably similar. The new standards provide parents, doctors, policymakers and child advocates with a benchmark to indicate when the nutrition and healthcare needs of children are not being met. Under-nutrition, overweight and obesity, and other growth-related conditions can then be detected and addressed at an early stage. Please refer to the WHO's Child Growth Standards page for more information. 

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Exercise Cuts Diabetes Risk in People with Big Waists

Exercise can help people with large waistlines reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, Finnish researchers said. Type 2 diabetes, the more common form of the illness caused by an inability to make or properly use insulin, is linked to being overweight or obese. But scientists from the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki found that people with large waistlines who exercise, were less likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes than their less active counterparts. "People who were obese were more likely to be diagnosed with glucose intolerance and type 2 diabetes but if they were physically active their risk was significantly lower," said Katja Borodulin, who headed the study.  

"The novelty value of our study is that we used waist-to-hip ratio which is a measure of abdominal obesity and not body mass index (BMI), which was used in previous studies," she added in an interview. Borodulin and her team studied the impact of exercise on 1,812 normal and overweight people in the study published in the journal Diabetic Medicine. They found that physically inactive people with large waistlines were 5.5 times more likely to suffer from diabetes than active people with small waists. They added that 30 minutes of exercise five times a week could help people with large waists lower their odds of suffering the illness by 4.2 times. A large waistline, high blood pressure, raised insulin levels, excess body weight and abnormal cholesterol levels are a cluster of signs of metabolic syndrome. If someone has three or more symptoms, they have the syndrome and are at a higher risk of suffering from heart disease and stroke as well as diabetes.