Especially the ones in their rooms.

We all know teenagers watch a lot of TV.
And we know there is a well established connection between excessive TV, bad diets and obesity. But it turns out that a having a TV in the bedroom is even worse. Daheia Barr-Anderson, an adolescent health researcher at the University of Minnesota, today published a study in the journal Pediatrics on 781 students from 31 Minnesota schools. She found that 62 percent have a TV in their bedrooms.
Those with a bedroom TV were twice as likely to watch five or more hours of TV per day compared to those who didn’t have one: (16.4 percent vs 8.2 percent)
It gets worse. Girls with a TV spent less time in vigorous physical activity, ate fewer vegetables, drank more sweetened drinks, and ate fewer family meals when compared to girls without a bedroom TV.
Boys with a bedroom TV ate fewer fruits, had lower grade point averages, and ate fewer family meals.
What surprised, her she said, is that the ones with a bedroom TV did not appear to have higher body weight or rates of obesity. Or at least not yet. Studies of younger kids have shown that the bedroom TV is a strongly associated with obesity. Clearly, she said, that the kids with the bedroom TV are clearly at higher risk because of their habits.

So I’ve been the parent of a teenager. I can picture the reaction I’d get the day I walk in and take away TV. So how do you do it? DO you do it? Do you kill the TV?

Sexually transmitted diseases are not the only thing that’s on the rise in Minnesota.  For the first time in sixteen years the rate of teenage pregnancies in the state went up  –  by a whopping 6 percent — in 2006. Teenage births went up by 7 percent. That means that 38 out of every 1,000 teenagers in the state became pregnant. The most surprising aspect of the new report from the Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Prevention and Parenting (MOAPPP) is that Minnesota’s increase was twice as big as the national average. The increases occurred across all races.  Brigid Riley, executive director of MOAPP, which uses state data to put out the report each year, said she thinks that state-wide cuts in sex education, and health care that were first implemented five years ago are now coming to fruition.  And she says there is no sign that rates are going to come down. “Can you imagine what it’s going to look like in two years,” she said.

For years I’ve been writing health care stories in the hopes that all of you out there will read them. Now with the launch of this blog we can start having a two-way conversation about the health of all the bodies you love. So let’s chat!

Last week I talked to Fred Evans, one of the people on the front lines of the battle against sexually transmitted diseases. He had a novel approach for how to start turning that epidemic around. He runs a community outreach program called Seen On Da’ Streets in north Minneapolis that teaches young black men about STD’s and provides screening. The rates of infection are especially frightening among young African Americans. Evans says that the only way to stop it is to make safe sex, well, sexy. There is also a fascinating piece in the New York Times Magazine about the small abstinence until marriage movement on campuses.

Here is what Evans had to say:

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