Smoking during pregnancy: What is its role in childhood obesity?
Categories: Womens Health, Diet & Weight Loss, Nutrition & Supplements
There have been several studies done about the negative impacts of smoking during pregnancy, but research coming out of Japan has a new twist on this particular area of study: Children of women who smoked while they were pregnant are three times more likely to become obese.
The study is the first of its kind to actually follow children until they were 10 years old. However, researchers could do no more than correlate smoking during pregnancy and obesity, so no one is really sure if smoking actually causes obesity, or if there are other lifestyle factors that contribute to the finding.
Several more critical health issues have already been linked with smoking during pregnancy. This one is interesting though. Could something be happening in the womb to predispose kids to gaining excessive weight? What do you think?
The study is the first of its kind to actually follow children until they were 10 years old. However, researchers could do no more than correlate smoking during pregnancy and obesity, so no one is really sure if smoking actually causes obesity, or if there are other lifestyle factors that contribute to the finding.
Several more critical health issues have already been linked with smoking during pregnancy. This one is interesting though. Could something be happening in the womb to predispose kids to gaining excessive weight? What do you think?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Erin 10-30-2007 @ 5:46PM
It's certainly a provocative theory, and yet another reason that women who put anything nasty in their bodies while they're pregnant are idiots. I wonder, though, if children of smokers aren't predisposed to obesity so much as nurtured in an environment where being healthy isn't a priority. If Mommy runs through a pack of Camels in a day, how much thought do you think she's going to give to her children heading for the Cheetos bag after school?
I hope they do some more research with this to kind of pin down the biological predisposition itself.
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