After following strict diet regime, are you still obese? You will be surprised to know that the obesity begins even before birth. A team of researchers at the Newcastle University in United Kingdom have found that some people are programmed to be fat while still they were in the womb, with the mother to be’s lifestyle affecting her baby’s health for years to come.
Changes were found in their DNA at birth which may be a result of their mother’s diet or exposure to pollution and stress. The changes were linked to higher Body Mass Index in children aged above nine years. (The researchers also stated that more work was needed to definitely prove the link between these change and obesity).
Caroline Relton, who led the research, said, “Other studies have just taken genes at birth and looked at difference irrespective of whether they are differently expressed with different levels of obesity. The difference between this study and others is that we had a reason to focus on the genes we looked at because we knew they were differently expressed in children with higher BMI,” he told the BBS.
Childhood or adult obesity has many causes and scientists have previously linked specific genes, such as the FTO gene, with increased body weight.
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