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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Pregnant women who want to keep the extra pounds off their children need to start while they're pregnant.
Harvard researchers find 3-year-olds whose mothers gained too much weight during their pregnancies -- and even those whose mothers gained the recommended amount -- were more likely to be overweight or obese at age 3.
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The investigators explain recommended weight gain during pregnancy was last set in 1990 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which upped the gain for most women in response to speculation that not gaining enough weight could lead to low birth weight infants. The current recommendations call for normal weight women to gain about 25 to 35 pounds and those who are overweight to gain about 13 pounds.
In the current study, 51 percent of the women gained more than the recommended amount of weight. and 35 percent gained the recommended amount. Compared with women who gained less than the recommended amount, they were about four-times more likely to have an overweight child at 3 years old.
The authors note the IOM guidelines came out before the obesity epidemic grew so large in the United States and suggest these new findings may call for a reevaluation of those guidelines.
"It has been 17 years since the IOM came out with its last set of recommendations, before the obesity epidemic hit with full force," writes study author Matthew Gillman, M.D. "Now, women are coming into pregnancy at higher weights and likely gaining excessively more than they used to. We need to find out how to counter this trend -- but not go too far back in the other direction when women were gaining too little weight."
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, published online April 2, 2007
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