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Brittany Johnson's appointment calendar is cluttered with doctors. There's her diabetes doctor; her primary care physician; her sleep apnea expert; her podiatrist; her ear, nose and throat specialist; her psychiatrist and her bariatric surgeon.

Brittany is 16. All of her medical problems can be traced to one source: She weighs more than 300 pounds.

The Charlotte teen is among the rising ranks of obese children who are developing diseases once associated with aging adults: diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, fatty liver disease, osteoporosis, depression. The crisis is so severe that experts say this generation may be the first in 200 years to have a shorter life expectancy than its parents.