Most moms love to see their newborns gain weight and turn into chubby babies. However, according to new research, chubby babies look adorable and cute, but may not grow up to be healthy children.
Emphasizing this point, researchers at the University of Sydney found that excessive weight gain in infancy placed children at higher risks of obesity and heart diseases later. The study, published in the online issue of Pediatrics, looked at nearly 400 children from Sydney. Lead author Dr. Michael Skilton and colleagues followed the participants from birth to age 8.
Researchers found that unnecessary weight gain until 18 months of age further increased the children's risks of becoming obese, developing high blood pressure, systemic inflammation and arterial wall thickening at age 8. Every additional weight gain of 1kg at infancy was associated with an extra weight of 2.1 to 3.3 kg later in childhood.
"The first 18 months of life are an important period for our growth and development," Skilton said in a news release. "Excessive weight gain during infancy was strongly associated with increased waist circumference and higher blood pressure at eight years of age, compared to those with normal weight gain in early life."
The researchers also found that breastfeeding until 6 months prevented babies from the risk of gaining excess weight.
"We have identified, for example, that breastfeeding is a potentially modifiable factor associated with significantly less early life weight gain," he added.
The revelations come at a time when childhood obesity has more than tripled in the United States over the past 30 years. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report shows a shocking increase in the number of obese children aged 6 to 11, from 7 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 2008.
The current study supports a recent study reported in the journal Pediatric Obesity. Researchers from the Brigham Young University found that certain unhealthy feeding practices that parents follow placed their infants at greater risk of being diagnosed with clinical obesity at age 2 and later.
