The Importance Of Your infant’s metabolism and Weight Gain In First Week Of Life
According to researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania and also the University of Iowa babies may develop a pattern of metabolism during the first week of life that may have a determination for whether or not they may be overweight as young adults. Those who gained weight rapidly during their first week are more likely to be overweight as young adults according to the study. The infants being studied were healthy, white, formula-fed infants.
The study suggested that there is a critical period during that first week of life where the body’s physiology was being programmed and that programming may play a key role in the development of chronic disease throughout the life of the individual.
Researchers have drawn connections between overweight babies and the continued pattern of being overweight through childhood and into young adulthood.
Formula-fed babies tended to become obese throughout childhood more so than breast-fed infants. In fact, infants who were breast-fed for the first six months of life were 22% less likely to become obese than their formula-fed counterparts. This study endorses the fact that breast-feeding has benefits regarding reducing the risk for obesity.
The study makes the correlation that babies who had a too rapid weight gain in the first week of life may increase the risk of future weight problems.
Researchers adjusted for other factors, before concluding that for each additional 100 grams of weight gained during the first eight days of life, increased the baby’s risk for obesity as an adult by 10%.
In America today, obesity is a big problem with 11% of American children and teens being obese. Obesity rates for these age groups have doubled in the past few decades.
If children are between the ages of 5 and 10 and are already overweight they now have at least one risk factor for heart disease.
It is not certain why the first week of life plays such a critical role in metabolic programming or weight patterning. Animal studies have found that when animals were overfed in the first few days of life it led to long-term obesity, possibly due to programming of the developing brain of the animal or in the way the endocrine system was affected by the overfeeding, since there is a connection between eating and hormones.
Studies are important and may be key to understanding the importance of nutrition, and how infants are fed and the future pattern of obesity. If the problem of obesity can be traced to the first week of life and the weight gain of infants during this week than perhaps it might be possible to make a difference someday in the rate of obesity of our children and teens.
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