Stressed-out mothers, fat kids?

Stressed-out mothers, fat kids?

Children increasingly suffer from Obesity. A risk factor for is, apparently, the perceived Stress of the mother, especially in the first year of the child. Girls are especially sensitive to this, as a study from the Helmholtz centre for environmental research (UFZ) in Leipzig.

Not only a unhealthy diet and lack of exercise increase the risk that children will be overweight. Mothers feel in the first year of your child of high Stress, so the likelihood was great that their children develop in the first five years of life, a high BMI. "The effects due to maternal Stress seem to sein&quot in the long term, embossing;, nutrition scientist Dr. Kristin Young from the Department of environmental immunology at the UFZ says.

The connection between maternal Stress and Obesity was particularly evident in the case of girls, as the researchers note in the journal BMC Public Health reports. It is possible that psychological factors such as Stress, the mother of young boys perceived to be less intense or be better compensated.

No effects on the weight development of the children of the perceived Stress of the mothers during pregnancy as well as during the second year of life of the child. "The first year of life seems to be a sensitive Phase, and for the propensity to be Overweight formative,” says Young. Finally, the mother and the child spend the entire first year together – a lot of time in the mothers ‘ perception of community Stress or related behaviors will be perceived by the child. For the study, data of 498 mother-to-child have been analysed pairs.

NK