Adult Obesity May Trace to Infancy

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Adult Obesity May Trace to Infancy

Heavy babies might be at risk of a lifetime of weight problems,

study suggests

By Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Oct. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Big babies who grow quickly in

the first two years of life risk being obese in childhood and

adulthood, British researchers report.

As obesity reaches epidemic proportions in the United States -- 30

percent of adults are obese and 65 percent are obese or overweight --

researchers are looking for keys to prevent it. Those efforts may

need to begin in childhood, the researchers said.

" Levels of obesity are increasing in the population, and halting the

rising prevalence of obesity is a public health priority, " said

study lead author Dr. Janis Baird, a research fellow at the MRC

Epidemiology Resource Centre at the University of Southampton.

" It is not clear how early prevention can begin, " she added.

To determine whether obesity may begin in infancy, Baird and her

colleagues looked at 24 studies that found a relationship between

infant size or growth during the first two years of life and obesity

later in life.

They found that the heaviest infants and those who gained weight

rapidly during the first and second year of life faced a nine-fold

greater risk of obesity in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

" These findings suggest that factors in infant growth are probably

influencing the risk of later obesity, " Baird said. " There are many

factors that do influence infant growth. What's needed now are much

more detailed studies to look at how infants grow and what the

predictors of their growth are. "

The study findings appear in the Oct. 14 online edition of the

British Medical Journal.

One expert believes that nurture, more than nature, is responsible

for the rise in obesity among children.

" If people take this too seriously, people may start calorie-

restricting their infants, which is a bad thing, " said Dr. Dennis

Woo, chairman of the pediatrics department at Santa -UCLA

Medical Center, in California.

According to Woo, children regulate their own calorie intake.

" A lot of kids eat what they want to eat, and they do a pretty good

job of regulating their weight and height balance. There are some

kids who grow rapidly in the first year, but then they go through a

phase where they become picky as far as their eating goes, " added

Woo, who's also an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the

University of California, Los Angeles Geffen School of

Medicine.

Woo advises parents to let infants eat what they want to eat and not

force them to eat during the time they are picky about eating. " We

are fighting the cultural belief that fat babies are healthy

babies, " Woo said. " So people like to fatten their kids up. "

Many parents also believe fat babies are fine because they slim down

when they are older, Woo said. " That doesn't always happen. People

use that as a rationale for really stuffing their kids. "

" There is nothing wrong with a baby being heavy as an infant as long

as he's regulating his own eating, " Woo said. " There will come a

time when he will not be growing and he will cut down on his eating.

Most of the time, those are the big babies who then slim down. "

Woo believes healthy eating habits begin in infancy.

" We want to teach all kids healthy eating habits right from the very

beginning, " he said. " We need to shape how people look at eating.

Because infants don't have the psychological cues that adults have,

they respond to their biological needs. We could actually learn from

infants about how to eat. "

More information

The National Institutes of Health can tell you more about childhood

obesity.

SOURCES: Janis Baird, M.D., Ph.D., research fellow, MRC Epidemiology

Resource Centre, University of Southampton, England; Dennis Woo,

M.D., chairman, pediatrics department, Santa -UCLA Medical

Center, Santa , Calif., and assistant clinical professor,

pediatrics, Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles; Oct.

14, 2005, British Medical Journal online

Last Updated: Oct. 14, 2005