Obesity risks begin even before a child is born, The Los Angeles Times reports. Today, one of every three U.S. children is overweight — but it’s much easier to prevent obesity than to treat it. That’s why pediatric obesity experts now say intervention should begin very early. The risk of becoming overweight or obese, it increasingly seems, begins before a child is born, establishes roots in infancy and may be entrenched by the time a child goes to kindergarten.
In recent studies, researchers concluded that some risk factors for childhood obesity exist even before birth. Further, they’ve found, obese 3-year-olds already show the signs of inflammation that is linked to heart disease in adults.
The notion that a person’s lifelong weight trajectory might be programmed early in life is startling — and potentially revolutionary, says Dr. Nicolas Stettler, an associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we can identify a short period of time where an intervention can have a long-lasting effect, that could be very promising,” he says.
Michelle Obama’s anti-childhood obesity program “Let’s Move“ is a positive one – but the fight against obesity should begin with mothers and prevention. Mothers can keep their babies off the obesity path by fighting against obesity themselves. Almost half of U.S. women today begin pregnancy overweight or obese, automatically increasing the likelihood that their babies will be born either too small or too large, both of which increase the risk of obesity for the child later in life.
How much weight is gained during pregnancy is also important. The odds of being overweight at age 7 were 48% higher for children of women who gained more weight than recommended during pregnancy compared with women who met weight guidelines.
“What we find is that these things set up children for a lifelong risk of obesity,” says Asheley Cockrell Skinner, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “These factors don’t just make them overweight; they become barriers to helping them change when they get older. It becomes the story that never ends.”
