(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Growing like a weed may put babies at risk for high
blood pressure in adulthood.
Weight gain between birth and five months and then again between the ages of
about two and five years makes the most difference in predicting blood pressure
as kids enter adulthood. That’s according to researchers who carried out an
innovative study to gauge the effect of early growth on adult blood pressure.
Overall, people who gained weight most rapidly during those time periods were
more likely to end up with high blood pressure than those who gained weight more
slowly.
“From a public health perspective, the results are important,” study author Yoav
Ben-Shlomo, from the University of Bristol in the U.K., was quoted as saying.
“If children put on more post-natal weight today than they did in the past, then
we could better predict that the burden of high blood pressure will increase in
the future.”
Maintaining a normal blood pressure is important to health because high blood
pressure can lead to serious medical problems like heart attacks and stroke. The
authors stop short of saying parents should be overly concerned about their
child’s weight in early childhood, noting the findings may not apply to every
child. However, making sure children have a healthy diet and get regular
exercise should be a priority.
The research was carried out in about 680 adults around the age of 25 who had
been assessed for growth patterns 14 times between birth and age five.
SOURCE: Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association, published
online September 2, 2008
