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(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. Thats 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.
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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 childs 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
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