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Study Shows Child's Weight Can Be Influenced by Mother During Pregnancy

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Brief Description:
A new study shows that a child's weight may be influenced by the mother even before the child is born.

Transcript:
Schmalfeldt: A new study shows that a child's weight may be influenced by the mother even before the child is born. The study, conducted by researchers from Ohio State University College of Nursing and School of Public Health, showed that a child is more likely to be overweight at a very young age if the mother was overweight or obese before she became pregnant. Dr. Patricia Grady is Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, which supported the study. She explains the significance of the findings.

Grady: What this study suggests is that not only is it difficult if you are overweight at any point in your life to alter that and to reach an optimal weight, but that if you are a child who is born from an overweight mother, that the cards are really stacked against you more to begin with and so that it increases the level of difficulty to be able to do that.

Schmalfeldt: Doctor Grady said that understanding how these factors may contribute to obesity in early life will better equip health care professionals to fight the increasing problems of obesity in America, and to help prevent the diseases that go along with it, like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer.

Grady: There's a subtle message here, too, in the sense that a young woman who is healthy herself and knows how to be healthy will in all likelihood be a better teacher for a child to have a healthy life in other respects as well.

Schmalfeldt: For more information, visit the website http://ninr.nih.gov/ninr. From the National Institutes of Health, I'm Bill Schmalfeldt in Bethesda, Maryland.

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