More overweight after cesarean section? Children born via cesarean section have a 40% higher chance of being overweight. This is revealed in recent research.
More overweight after cesarean section
You might almost think I’m on a crusade to absolve overweight people of any self-responsibility. However, it is merely coincidental that I wrote about the genetic influence of the father on calorie burning in the same week and, just today, about genes determining whether you enjoy exercising or not.
The American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2016 are currently taking place in New Orleans. One of the studies whose findings were presented there is that of Noel Mueller, assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.
His team analyzed the data from 1,441 full-term deliveries from the Boston Birth Cohort [2]. They looked at the weight of the children from these deliveries between the ages of 2 and 8 years.
The study found that children born via cesarean section have a 40% higher chance of being overweight during childhood. This association was even stronger in cesarean section births to mothers who were already overweight. Conversely, the more frequently documented association between maternal overweight and child overweight is smaller when delivery does not occur via cesarean section.
The researchers suspect that this difference is related to microbes in the birth canal to which the child is exposed during a normal delivery.
We suspect that these microbes may benefit a child’s health, including enhancing metabolism and training the immune system.
Noel Mueller, Johns Hopkins University
Subsequent research should now investigate whether this effect of cesarean section can be limited or prevented by exposing babies born via cesarean section to microbes from the birth canal after birth.
References
- American Heart Association. (2016, November 14). Children born by Cesarean section may have a greater risk of obesity. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 15, 2016
- jhsph.edu/departments/population-family-and-reproductive-health/center-on-early-life-origins-of-disease/projects.html
