‘How Mothers can Reduce Obesity in their Children’
Researchers have revealed how mothers can reduce the risk of obesity in their children by following certain health habits.
According to sciencedaily.com, children and adolescents whose mothers eat healthy diets, exercise regularly, keep healthy body weight, drink alcohol in moderation, and do not smoke are 75 per cent less likely to become obese when compared with children of mothers do not indulge in such habits.
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The new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health stressed that when both mother and child adhered to these habits, the risk of obesity was 82 per cent lower compared with mother and children who did not.
A senior author of the study, Qi Sun, noted, “our study was the first to demonstrate that an overall healthy lifestyle really outweighs any individual healthy lifestyle factors followed by mothers when it comes to lowering the risk of obesity in their children.”
Sun stressed that while it was unknown if genetics played a role in obesity, the rapid increase of the disease in recent years was likely due to changes in lifestyle and diet, indicating that “nurture” more than “nature” was fuelling the current obesity epidemic.
The study focused on the association between a mother’s lifestyle and the risk of obesity among her children and adolescents between 9 and 18 years of age. They examined data from 24,289 children enrolled in the Growing Up Today Study, who were born to 16,945 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II.
The researchers found that 1,282 of the children developed obesity during a median five-year followup period. Maternal obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity were strongly associated with obesity among children and adolescents, according to sciencedaily. com.
By: Dayo Ojerinde
The Punch News
