Identical twins don’t just share DNA; They also share a uterus. Could that help explain some of their metabolic similarities? “Fetal overnutrition, evidenced Due to large birth weight for gestational age, it is a strong predictor of obesity in childhood and adulthood.” Could it be that you are what your mother ate?
A dramatic example from the animal world is the crossbreeding of Shetland ponies with huge draft horses. Either way, the babies are half pony/half horse, but when carried in the pony’s uterus, they come out much smaller, as you can see below and at 0:47 of my video. The role of epigenetics in the obesity epidemic. (Thank goodness for the mother pony!) is presumably the same reason why the mule (mother horse and father donkey) is larger than the hinny (mother donkey and father horse). The way to test this in people is to study the size of surrogate mothers’ babies after in vitro fertilization.
Who do you think more? determines What is the birth weight of a test tube baby? Is it the donor mother who provided all the DNA or the surrogate mother who provided the intrauterine environment? When tested, the womb won. Incredibly, a baby who had a thin birth mother but was born to an obese surrogate mother may have a higher risk of becoming obese than a baby with a heavier birth mother but was born to a thin surrogate mother. The researchers “concluded that the environment provided by the human mother is more important than her genetic contribution to birth weight.”
The most compelling data comes from comparing Obesity rates in siblings born to the same mother, before and after their bariatric surgery. Compared Compared to their brothers and sisters born before surgery, those born when the mother weighed about 100 pounds less had lower rates of inflammation, metabolic disorders, and, most importantly, three times less risk of developing severe obesity. : 35 percent of those born before surgery. The loss was affected, compared to 11 percent of those born later. The researchers concluded that “these data emphasize how critical it is to prevent obesity and treat it effectively to prevent further transmission to future generations.”
Wait. Mom had the same DNA before and after surgery. She passed on the same genes. How might your weight during pregnancy differently affect the fate of your children’s weight? Darwin himself accepted“In my opinion, the biggest mistake I have made has been not giving enough weight to the direct action of the environment, that is, food… independently of natural selection.” We finally discovered the mechanism by which this can happen: epigenetics.
Epigenetics, which half “On top of genetics,” it places an additional level of information on the DNA sequence that can be affected by our environment, as well as potentially passed on to our children. It is thought that this explain the “developmental programming” that can occur in the womb, depending on the weight of the mother, or even the grandmother. Since all the eggs in your little daughter’s ovaries are already preformed before birth, the mother’s weight during pregnancy could potentially affect the risk of obesity in their grandchildren as well. Either way, we can imagine how this could result in a vicious intergenerational cycle in which obesity begets obesity.
Is there anything we can do about it? Well, breastfed babies can have a lower risk of later obesity, although the benefits may be limited to those who are exclusively breastfed, as the effect may be due to growth factors motivated from exposure to excess protein in baby formula, as you can see below and at 3:51 in my video. However, the data on breastfeeding is controversial and there are accusations. level of a “white hat bias.” That’s the concern that public health researchers may disproportionately leave out research results that don’t fit some goal for the common good. (In this case, preferably publish studies on breastfeeding that show more positive results). But of course, that criticism came from someone who works for an infant formula company. Mother is Better, regardless. However, its role in the childhood obesity epidemic remains uncertain.
Prevention can be the key. Given the epigenetic influence of maternal weight during pregnancy, a symposium of pediatric nutrition experts concluded that “pregnancy planning, including prior optimization of maternal weight and metabolic condition, offers a safe means to initiate prevention rather than treatment.” of pediatric obesity. It’s easier said than done, but overweight moms-to-be can take solace in the fact that after weight loss in the surgery study, even moms who gave Births of children with three times lower risk were still, on average, obese, suggesting that losing weight before pregnancy is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
To begin with, what triggered the whole obesity epidemic? There are a multitude of factors, and I covered many of them in my 11-video series on the epidemic in the related posts below.
We are also what our mothers ate in other ways. Verify:
