Soda During Pregnancy Boosts Child Obesity Risk

by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Pregnancy

Pregnant women who drink non-diet sodas during pregnancy are more likely to have kids who carry extra body fat by age 7, researchers say.

In the study of more than 1,000 mother-child pairs, each additional serving of sugary soda per day consumed in pregnancy was associated with higher increments of waist size and body mass in kids years later.

“Sugary beverages have been linked to obesity in children and adults,” said study author Sheryl Rifas-Shiman of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Although past research has tied sodas and some fruit drinks to excess weight gain, obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, few have looked at beverage intake during pregnancy, she and her colleagues write in Pediatrics.

“Childhood obesity is widespread and hard to treat,” Rifas-Shiman told Reuters Health by email. “So it’s important to identify modifiable factors that occur prenatally and during infancy so prevention can start early.”

The researchers recruited 1,078 women from among patients at eight obstetric offices affiliated with Atrius Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates in eastern Massachusetts.

The study team had in-person meetings with each woman at the end of her first and second trimesters, as well as during the first few months after her baby was born. In addition, kids were assessed in early childhood, around age 3, and in mid-childhood, around age 8. Mothers also completed mailed questionnaires every year for the child’s first six birthdays.

At all visits, researchers collected information about both parents and details of the household. During pregnancy, women answered questionnaires about what they typically ate and drank, including how much regular and sugar-free soda, fruit juice, fruit drinks and water they consumed each day.

At the mid-childhood visit, when kids were between ages 6 and 11 years, the research team measured each child’s height, weight, waist circumference and skinfold thickness. With these measurements, they calculated body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height.

When researchers looked at data gathered during pregnancy, they found that more than half of mothers had consumed more than half a serving a day of non-diet soda during pregnancy, and nearly 10 percent had consumed two or more servings a day.

Mothers who drank more sugary drinks during pregnancy tended to be younger, had higher prepregnancy BMI, lower education, lower income, shorter breastfeeding times and were more likely to have smoked during pregnancy.

About one quarter of the children were overweight or obese by mid-childhood, and BMI, waist circumference and skinfold thickness were highest among kids whose mothers drank at least two servings of sugary drinks per day.

Only regular sodas were associated with this difference. Juice, diet soda and water consumed during pregnancy weren’t linked to a higher BMI score in kids. The research team also didn’t see differences based on the mother’s weight, race or ethnicity, the child’s gender or the amount of soda children themselves drank.

“I was surprised that maternal intake seemed to be more important than child intake,” Rifas-Shiman noted.

In the future, she and colleagues plan to study the long-term effects of efforts to reduce sugary beverage intake during pregnancy. They’re now using new methods to analyze when children’s intake of sugary beverages matters the most for their weight and health.

“I was struck that the differences in children’s body composition were seen in relation to intake levels that appear unremarkable, even less than one serving per day,” said Sian Robinson of the University of Southampton in the UK, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“We need to know more about the long-term effects of maternal nutrition on offspring health,” she told Reuters Health by email. “Few intervention studies in pregnancy have longer-term follow-up data to describe the effects on children’s body composition.”

Several of these intervention studies have been completed recently, Robinson added, and that follow-up data will be available soon.

“The links between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity are well-established,” she said. “But this new data suggests mothers’ consumption is important and has public health relevance.”

Pregnant? Diet Beverages Linked to Child Obesity

by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Pregnancy

Women who drink diet drinks while pregnant almost double the risk that their child will be overweight or obese at 7 years of age, says a study lead by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Childhood obesity is known to increase the risk for health problems later in life, such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some cancers.

Researchers found that as the volume of amniotic fluid increases, pregnant women tend to increase their consumption of fluids. To avoid extra calories, many women replace sugar-sweetened soft drinks and juices with beverages containing artificial sweeteners.

Previous studies of adults have found that artificially sweetened beverages encouraged weight gain, and the study authors sought to discover if drinking diet beverages during pregnancy had an effect on the weight of children.

“Our findings suggest that artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy are not likely to be any better at reducing the risk for later childhood obesity than sugar-sweetened beverages,” said the study’s senior author, Cuilin Zhang, Ph.D.

 “Not surprisingly, we also observed that children born to women who drank water instead of sweetened beverages were less likely to be obese by age 7.”

The researchers limited their analysis to data from more than 900 pregnancies that were complicated by gestational diabetes, a type of diabetes that occurs only during pregnancy.

Approximately 9 percent of these women reported consuming at least one artificially sweetened beverage each day. Their children were 60 percent more likely to have a high birth weight, compared to children born to women who never drank sweetened beverages.

At age 7, children born to mothers who drank an artificially sweetened beverage daily were nearly twice as likely to be overweight or obese.

Drinking a daily artificially sweetened beverage appeared to offer no advantages over consuming one sweetened by sugar. At age 7, children born to both groups were equally likely to be overweight or obese.

Women who substituted water for sweetened beverages, however, reduced their children’s obesity risk at age 7 by 17 percent.

Scientists aren’t sure why drinking artificially sweetened beverages compared to drinking water may increase obesity risk. The authors cited an animal study that associated weight gain with changes in the types of bacteria and other microbes in the digestive tract.

Another animal study suggested that artificial sweeteners may increase the ability of the intestines to absorb the blood sugar glucose. Other researchers found evidence in rodents that, by stimulating taste receptors, artificial sweeteners desensitized the animals’ digestive tracts, so that they felt less full after they ate and were more likely to overeat.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of obese children has more than tripled since the 1970s. Today, 1 in 5 children between the ages of 6 and 19 are obese.

In addition to increased health risks as adults, obese children also have an increased risk of chronic health problems, such as asthma and Type 2 diabetes. They are also more likely to be bullied, and to suffer from depression and lower self-esteem.

Vitamin D During Pregnancy May Help Prevent Childhood Asthma

by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Pregnancy

Taking vitamin D supplements while pregnant may protect a mom’s baby from developing asthma, says a study published in the journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The study found that the supplements could positively modify the immune system of the fetus and could protect it against asthma and respiratory infections.

Researchers from the U.K.’s King’s College London looked at the effect that taking a supplement of 4,400 IU vitamin D3 per day during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy versus the recommended daily intake (RDI) of 400 IU/day, had on the immune system of the newborn.

Volunteers were randomized at 10 to 18 weeks of pregnancy and given either a high or low dose of Vitamin D. At birth, blood was taken from the newborns’ umbilical cords and tested to gauge their innate immune system, which is the baby’s first line of defense to infection, and their T lymphocyte responses, which provide longer-lasting protection.

They discovered that blood samples from babies born to mothers supplemented with higher doses of vitamin D3 had stronger immune responses that protect newborns from infection. Since strong immune responses are associated with a decrease in the risk of developing asthma, researchers believe the babies will have better respiratory health during childhood.  

“The majority of all asthma cases are diagnosed in early childhood implying that the origin of the disease stems in fetal and early life,” said lead researcher, Professor Catherine Hawrylowicz of King’s College London.

“Studies to date that have investigated links between vitamin D and immunity in the baby have been observational,” she said. “For the first time, we have shown that higher Vitamin D levels in pregnancy can effectively alter the immune response of the newborn baby, which could help to protect the child from developing asthma.”

Other recent studies have also found that nutritional substances can affect asthma. Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that omega-3 fatty acids, the healthy oils found in cold water fish and fish oil supplements, can help fight asthma. In addition, a New England Journal of Medicine study in late 2016 showed that pregnant women who ate fish or took fish oil supplements reduced the risk of asthma in their children.

Vitamin D during pregnancy has also been found to influence the risk of attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) as toddlers. Danish researchers studied the umbilical cords of infants, and asked moms to complete surveys noting their children’s behavior when they were two-and-a-half years old. Moms who had taken vitamin D when pregnant, and whose umbilical cords contained high levels, reported significantly fewer symptoms of ADHD in their children.