Having someone to share your toys with may not be such a bad idea after all. They may have done something good for you without you realizing it. A new study suggests that having a younger sibling may be beneficial to the health.
The study found that those who welcome a sibling at a later time are three times more at risk for obesity than those who welcome a sibling at the age of 3 or 4. The study didn't indicate that being an only child can put you at risk for obesity, but the results reveal that it is possible for parents to make changes in their lifestyle as the family expands that would benefit the family even after another addition to the family arrives, Medical Daily reported.
Senior author of the study, Dr. Julie Lumeng, a pediatrics and public health researcher at the University of Michigan and C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor explained that when a child has a younger sibling, there is a great possibility for that child to be more active. "Maybe families are more likely to take the kids to the park when there is a younger sibling, or maybe the child is less likely to be sedentary, watching TV, when there is a younger sibling to engage them in more active pretend play," Lumeng added.
They were, however, able to study data from nearly 700 children across the United States, track down the status of their weight, and whether a sibling was born before the child entered the first grade. Those children who had a sibling born when they were aged 3 or 4 were found to have the least amount of obesity. The result showed that just fewer than 5% of those children were obese by the time they entered the first grade.
Among those who had a sibling when they were 2 and 3 years old, the researchers found that there are 8 percent who were obese by the time they enter the first grade. However, there are almost 13 percent obese children who didn't have a younger sibling born on or before they reached first grade.
According to US News, Dr. Lumeng can't explain the connection she found in the study. She emphasized that she found something to connect the two together but that it's not a cause-and-effect relationship. She also said that the team didn't have any data to analyze for them to understand the mechanism.
