A mother’s weight showed a very strong association with a child’s weight.

This is not the first study to connect a parent’s obesity to a kid’s risk. And it’s not the first to highlight the role of a mothers’ weight on a child’s risk.

What sets this work apart is that the researchers aren’t relying on self reports, they have measurements of weight and height – objective data that makes for stronger research conclusions.

The study involved data from 4,432 UK families who took part in a yearly national health survey in the years between 2001 and 2006. A nurse associated with the study measured each subjects’ weight and height. Subjects were classified as normal, overweight, obese or severely obese based on the calculation of body mass index.

In 38% of the families, at least one parent was obese; another 8% had two obese parents. Just 14% of families had two normal weight parents, and in these families child obesity was uncommon, at a rate of about 2%.

In families with two obese parents, 22% of kids were also obese. When both parents fell into the severely obese category, 35% of these children were obese. The weight of both father and mother was also connected to the kid’s risk of being obese. Of those with an obese father, 12% (compared to 4% of those with normal weight fathers) were obese themselves; while an obese mother had 14% (3% of those with normal weight mothers) of her children also being obese.

Using statistics to control for the other parent’s weight, they found that the mothers’ weight showed a statistically stronger association with a child’s status than did the fathers.

Continues below…

Kids Risk Of Obesity Tied To Parents’ (Especially Mom)… Continued…

It may be that a mother’s diet and weight during pregnancy accounts for the stronger impact, especially since this period is thought to set a child’s future appetite regulation and weight. Mom also typically takes control over a child’s diet.

The number of overweight kids in the U.S. is also growing – with 1 out of 3 kids considered either overweight or obese. The reasons are many – more time in front of the TV, computer or video games, less time for busy families to prepare nutritious meals cooked at home.

The researchers suggest that their findings highlight the importance of early intervention to prevent the transmission of obesity from one generation to the next.

If you have concerns, talk with your child’s doctor who can give you a realistic assessment. Parents with high BMIs need to be aware of the risk of their childrens obesity, and try to encourage healthy eating and regular exercise. This isn’t easy, but if you look at the serious health conditions that added weight might bring to your child, you may just find the motivation to make your children do what you can’t.

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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A fascinating Australian study looked at the birthdays of Australian Football League (AFL) players and found that many were born in the first months of the year and fewer were born in the later months of the year. The research appears in a Springer book called Analyzing Seasonal Health Data, written by study author Dr. Adrian Barnett and professor Annette Dobson.

In the study, the researchers found that 33% more AFL players than expected had birthdays in January, while 25% fewer had birthdays at the end of the year, in December.

These findings are similar to other research that found there was an association between being born near the start of the school year and a better chance of growing up to be a pro football, volleyball, basketball or ice hockey player.

Interesting that, Wayne Gretzky, Kelly Hrudey and Bobby Hull are all January babies.

The Australian school year starts in January, and according to Barnett, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology, “Children who are taller have an obvious advantage when playing [Australian rules football]. If you were born in January, you have almost 12 months’ growth ahead of your classmates born late in the year, so whether you were born on December 31st or January 1st could have a huge effect on your life,”

Strange to think that two children, born only a day apart, could experience things so differently. One will bear the disadvantage of being the youngest and smallest in the year, while the one born on January 1st will have the benefits of being bigger and stronger earlier than peers.

The Australian research results mirror other work that links being born near the start of the school year and the chances of becoming a professional in either football, volleyball, basketball or ice hockey.

The studies have found that those born at the start of the year do better academically while also having more confidence. Smaller kids miss out, perhaps getting discouraged by playing with those in the same grade who are physically bigger and stronger. Missing out on sports and the exercise that comes with it has consequences not only on their potential athletic careers, but also on their future health as well.

Continues below…

Professional Athletes From Birth Continued…

Organized sports have no shortage of cheerleaders, and there are certainly lots of benefits to being part of a team. Just be sure that your child is both emotionally and physically ready to participate – pushing a sport too early is frustrating (and pointless) for everyone.

Sometimes being pushed can turn a child off from sports for good. It’s really not until the age of 6 or 7 (usually) that most children have the physical skills and attention span to listen, take turns and understand the rules of a game.

The findings of the Australian research also suggest that children who have potential to excel in sports might be missed because they have to compete with more physically advanced peers.

Understanding the system that’s a part of organized sports and the evaluation of potential that favors children born in the early months of any year in sports like hockey, soccer and baseball is key.

Unless a child has exceptional talent at an early age, they won’t stand out to coaches as readily and the mechanisms for second chances in a year or two simply don’t exist.

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This intriguing new work suggests that the time of year your baby is born might have something to do with his or her future height and strength.

Making use of the wealth of data from the Children of the 90s Project, the Bristol University researchers studied babies born in 1991 and 1992, over 7,000 in all.

These infants were measured at birth and given a DXA scan at ten years old to measure bone density.

The team also looked at weather data from both years to account for the possible sun exposure of the mothers.

Some of the women supplied blood samples to check their vitamin D levels during their pregnancy. Interestingly, the blood tests aligned closely with the weather data.

What the research found was that by 10 years old the children born in the summer and fall months were an average half a centimeter (0.2 inches) taller and had almost 13 cm2 of extra bone area than those born in the spring or winter.

The wider bone area is an accepted indication of strength. And while taller people generally have wider bones, these children’s bones were sized over and above what they should have been for their height.

Professor of rheumatology Jon Tobias, a researcher with the project explains, “Wider bones are thought to be stronger and less prone to breaking as a result of osteoporosis in later life, so anything that affects early bone development is significant.”

The researchers theorize the size difference may come from the mothers’ sun exposure.

You’ve heard that your body naturally makes vitamin D from sunlight, and the study suggests that this process may be occurring for the developing baby as well as the mother.

A woman who goes through the later stage of pregnancy in the summer or early fall is able to get more vitamin D from sunlight just because she is able to be outside more readily exposed to the sun.

What’s more, vitamin D deficiency is increasingly common even in healthy pregnant women. Experts believe the current recommendation for pregnant women of 200 to 400 IUs of vitamin D a day is too low.

Ongoing work by the Arthritis Research Campaign involves a trial giving vitamin D supplements to mothers while they’re pregnant to see if this increases the bone density of the babies when they’re born and follows these children into childhood, perhaps even their later years.

The hope is that supplementing during pregnancy reduces the child’s risk of developing osteoporosis later in life.

While you’re waiting for the results of this study, any woman whose baby is due between November and May, when natural sunlight levels are very low, might even things out by taking a vitamin D supplement during her pregnancy.

Research has shown that during the winter the latitudes of 52 degrees north don’t have the ultraviolet light of the right wavelength for the body to use in making vitamin D.

And since most western diets don’t supply the amount the body needs – even with choices like fortified cereals, milk, fish and eggs – making that extra effort to get enough is important for both mom and baby.

Continues below…

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This Doctor Dropped 11 Sizes – Discover Her Shocking Secret

There’s an overwhelming body of research that shows most diets aren’t effective in the long term because they work AGAINST the body…

In fact most people who diet end up putting ON more weight than when they started.

It’s because most diets deprive you of the foods you enjoy, stop you getting the nutrients you need…basically forcing your body into ’starvation mode’…

Joy Siegrist MD developed a diet that works WITH your body…one that has a 96% success rate.

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Click through to see how Dr Joy Siegrist’s program will help you…

Babies Born In Summer Or Early Fall Are Taller And Stronger… continued

You may remember from previous emails on Vitamin D, that it’s not just pregnant women who should ensure they get sufficient Vitamin D.

This vital nutrient is also known to be important in keeping bones healthy and helping strengthen the immune system. It’s even been linked to the prevention of cancers like colon, breast and ovarian and might help hold off the mental decline that can affect people as they age.

Of course you’ll want to talk with your own doctor to decide if vitamin D supplements are right for you before you start do anything whether you’re expecting summer babies or not.

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If you’re wondering, as I have done, why mice are used in studies like this, there’s a totally humbling, unflattering answer.

It seems the genetic makeup of a mouse is surprisingly similar to our own, what’s more it’s a whole lot quicker to breed, study and scrutinize a mouse.

And though this staple of research laboratories everywhere probably won’t get the credit due these tiny creatures have taught us much of what we know about the workings of our own species.

What the mice in this latest research tell us is that mothers are able to pass on their learning experiences to their children, things they learned even before they became pregnant.

This idea could dramatically change how we think of inheritance. It may well be more than just genetics – blue eyes or blonde hair – it might also include hard-learned experience. A sort of protective mechanism built in by nature.

The team of experts found that young mice raised in an enriched environment – a cage with stimulation, nesting materials and engaging toys – were able to pass along the benefits of what they’d learned to the next generation of pups. Pups they had after growing up and being removed from the enriched environment.

And it wasn’t better parenting by the stimulated mothers. Even pups that were swapped at birth, given to mothers who’d been raised in plain cages with wood chips, were able to learn better, so long as their biological parents had been raised with the toys and stimulation.

Early learning appears to leave lasting changes on the brain according to the study.

When the team looked at the brains of the parent mice, who’d been raised in the “enriched” cages they saw clear changes in long-term potentiation, a way to measure how well nerve cells communicate with each other.

The pups had the same changes in their brains as their stimulated mothers, though they did not pass this change to their own children. This leads the researchers to believe the changes to the mouse DNA were not permanent.

No one knows what brings on these changes in the brain.

One theory suggests that learning and stimulation could raise levels of hormones. These levels could remain elevated for a long time, and affect a developing fetus, including humans.

Continues below…

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Mothers Pass On Experience To Children… Without Even Trying continued

There is a good deal of evidence that during embryonic development a fetus is very sensitive to what the mother is exposed to in the outer environment. Food, chemicals or hormones could all play a role.

“You inherit to some degree some aspects of your parent’s experience,” explains Larry Feig, a professor of biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, and one of the leaders of the research team.

And since environments can be both good and bad, Dean Hartley, a neurosciences researcher who also worked on the nuture versus nature study, cautions us to look closely at the prenatal environment surrounding a mother.

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In a just published study of 120 children aged 2 to 6 years researchers found a distinct link between parental food preferences and that of the contents of the children’s pretend shopping carts.

This experiment was set up perfectly for children… what little one doesn’t love those toy grocery carts and plastic food?

The team had each child take a turn in a play grocery store where there were a total of 133 choices, both healthy and not so healthy.

In the meantime, the parents filled out questionnaires about how often they bought certain foods and drinks. All reported that they brought their children with them grocery shopping.

Most of the children did “buy” some sugary, salty snacks and desserts, but on average, the carts were filled with equal amounts of healthy and not so healthy foods.

Remarkably, 35 of the subjects bought significantly more healthy items and less junk.

The results pointed to the idea that the health-consciousness of a child’s toy shopping cart might in fact mirror what was found on a parents’ grocery list.

The findings, reported in the November 2008 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, suggests that even very young children don’t just mindlessly grab for sweets when they have the chance.

Instead, they appear to be developing food preferences based on what they see Mom and Dad eating and buying at the store.

Those little ones are already making choices, paying closer attention than you realize to what you do.

“The data suggest that children begin to assimilate and mimic their parents’ food choices at a very young age, even before they are able to fully appreciate the implications of these choices,” write researchers led by Dr. Lisa A. Sutherland of Dartmouth Medical School.

Dr. Sutherland is a nutrition behavior and communication scientist who focuses on researching the impact of media and marketing on childhood obesity and tries to develop interventions that might help children and their families.

Continues below…

Holly Rigsby, CPT, Reveals How to Lose Stubborn Baby Weight (even years later)

Most women struggle to lose the extra pounds they gained during pregancy. In fact, on average women are 14 pounds heavier after children than before they had kids and are unable to shift the weight.

Holly Rigsby, CPT, was just like other Moms – wanting to lose weight and tone up.

So over three and half years of trial and error and training over 253 Moms she’s found a unique way to burn belly fat and get your body back no matter how old your children are.

If you would like to lose excess fat permanently without drugs, without supplements and without messing around with your metabolism click
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Young Children Eat What They See You Eating continued…

When it comes to food preferences, modeling good, healthy choices for your children seems to have some impact.

So if you want them to choose more fruits and veggies have them in the house, and eat them yourself. Try to think of the grocery store as a place to talk about healthy and unhealthy food choices, even with very young children.

While formal education about nutrition usually doesn’t begin until elementary school, there’s no reason to wait… and this research suggests the kids are picking up clues anyway, so why not make them the right ones?

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Data from an Australian study found that just over 40% of parents of both underweight and overweight children didn’t see a problem with their child’s weight.

The trend is startling, and makes it easy to see why eating habits and exercise patterns are not changing.

A significant number of parents don’t even see the problem that’s in front of them.

Dr Pene Schmidt, a doctoral researcher who led the study said, “Parents are more likely to take the necessary preventative actions if the perception of their child’s weight – whether underweight or overweight – is correct.”

The work was completed at the University of Melbourne’s School of Behavioural Science and included 2,100 children, using both Body Mass Index and waist circumference measurements to classify subjects into three distinct groups – “underweight”, “overweight” and “average”.

Next, these measurements were compared to the recorded perceptions of the parents, and the children themselves.

In total, 43% of parents of underweight children placed their child in the “average” bracket.

For the overweight children, the parental misperception climbed to 49%.

On the kid’s side, 6 out of 10 underweight girls, and 5 out of 10 underweight boys didn’t see their weight accurately.

Perceptions like these are hard to change.

Boys were more often perceived as underweight by their parents; while girls were more likely to be classified as overweight.

Twice as many parents expressed concern about their child being overweight rather than underweight.

The study also calls into question the tools currently in use to assess a child’s weight – BMI and waist circumference.

According to BMI, more children in the Australian study were classified as overweight than would be if waist circumference alone were used.

This may indicate the need for a hard look at the way weight is measured for children, while also pointing out the need for more information and resources for parents.

Obesity continues to be a concern for the health and well being of adults and children in the United States and around the world.

Adult men in the U.S. have an obesity percentage of 33.3%, while U.S. women are at 35.3%. For children and adolescents, 16.3% fall into the obese category.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), obesity raises the risk of:

- Coronary heart disease
- Type 2 diabetes
- Cancers (endometrial, breast and colon)
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides)
- Stroke
- Liver and Gallbladder disease
- Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
- Osteoarthritis (a degeneration of cartilage and underlying bone in a joint)
- Gynecological problems (abnormal menses, infertility)

Continues below…

Announcing: New Hope for Smokers Wanting to Quit

Hypnosis works for smokers…

It’s recognized by The American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the British Medical Association (BMA).

Also, hypnotherapy, and similar methods have been used by tens of thousands of people for various ailments, complaints and addictions – and now a new program has been created that promises some amazing results…

A guaranteed outcome of being able to permanently stop smoking with only a single one hour session.

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New Study: Nearly 40% Of Parents Can’t Accurately Pinpoint A Child’s Weight continued…

What worries healthcare workers is that being “big” is becoming more socially accepted all the time.

Think about plus size models and clothing designed for heavier people. Restaurant potions are big and getting bigger.

Celebrities battle their weight, some publicly, some with surgery, and some seemingly not at all. Think too about the accommodations that have been made to airline travel – and public transportation in general.

It seems our perceptions of weight (ours and our kids) are being skewed and rather than fighting the additional pounds when they start to become unhealthy more and more of us are taking them along for the ride.

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And while amazing strides have been made in cutting the risk of SIDS, about 2,500 infants continue to die suddenly in the United States each year.

For these parents it is the worst kind of pain… a living nightmare you don’t wish on your worst enemy. It hurts every minute of every day of the rest of your life.

These parents can take some small comfort knowing that investigations into exactly what causes SIDS are moving forward. There is a lot of good work being done. 

Many experts are coming to believe the condition involves an underlying abnormality (like a brain defect that affects breathing) combined with sleeping in an unsafe position or being exposed to an environmental challenge during a key period of growth. 

Other things we do know…
* SIDS is most common in babies 2 to 4 months old.
* 90% of SIDS cases happen in babies less than 6 months old.
* 20% of SIDS deaths happen in childcare settings.
* SIDS is more common in cold weather.
* SIDS happens more often during sleep, between the hours of 10:00 pm and 10:00 am  

Researchers in California at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research found that babies who slept in a room with a fan running had a 72% lower risk of SIDS compared to those who slept without a fan.

Opening a window, another way to circulate the air in the sleeping space, brought the risk of SIDS down 36%.

The study appears in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine and is the first to look for an association between better air circulation and reduced risk of SIDS.

Financed by the National Institutes of Health, this research involved data on 185 babies who died of SIDS from 1997 to 2000 in ten Northern California counties as well as Los Angeles County.

The SIDS babies were compared to 312 infants who were a match in age, socio economic status and ethnic backgrounds in those same counties.

Dr. De-Kun Li, study senior author said, “The baby’s sleeping environment really matters. This seems to suggest that by improving room ventilation we can further reduce risk.”

The researchers noted that using a fan reduced the risk of SIDS most for babies in poor sleeping environments. 

Of course using a fan doesn’t mean you should stop doing all the other very easy, sensible things the American Academy of Pediatrics  recommends to prevent SIDS….

Continues below… 

  *Highly Recommended*

Announcing: New Hope for Smokers Wanting to Quit

Hypnosis works for smokers…

It’s recognized by The American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the British Medical Association (BMA).

Also, hypnotherapy, and similar methods have been used by tens of thousands of people for various ailments, complaints and addictions – and now a new program has been created that promises some amazing results…

A guaranteed outcome of being able to permanently stop smoking with only a single one hour session.

Take a look at the simplest way to do this here

New Study: Fans Reduce SIDS Risk By 72% continued…

* Babies should always sleep on their backs.
* Firm mattresses should be the only sleeping surface — no waterbeds or air mattresses either.
* No thick quilts or comforters — being overheated during sleep puts your baby at risk.
* Pillows and stuffed toys should not be in the bed with babies.
* A dedicated sleeping space that’s free of drafts and is of a comfortable, steady temperature.
* Don’t smoke (or let anyone else smoke) around your baby. 

More work is needed, but because the idea of circulating the air in a baby’s room is in line with some SIDS theories, it’s certainly worth a try. 

Fans are affordable, and offer another benefit, the sound offers a soothing setting for a baby to sleep, blocking out much of the other routine noise of the house.

Good for you, perhaps life saving for your baby.

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