Various investigations have found that being obese or overweight can negatively affect pregnancy, both the health of the baby and the mother and the possible complications that may occur both during pregnancy and in childbirth and postpartum.
A new study gives us one more reason to watch our weight if we want to have a baby, since obesity in women can limit the development of the brain of babies from the second trimester of pregnancy .
Published this week in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , research by members of the New York University Grossman School of Medicine analyzed the relationship or influence of the mother’s body mass index (BMI) on the baby brain development .
In order to study and analyze this, 197 groups of metabolically active nerve cells were examined in the baby’s brain. Through various calculations and subgroup divisions based on the more than 19,000 possible connections between groups of neurons, the researchers found that two areas of the brain were strongly linked to their mothers’ BMI .
According to their results, a high BMI was associated with changes in two areas of the brain: the prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula . Both regions play a very important role in decision-making and behavior.
Previously, disruptions in the development of these two brain areas have been linked to certain disorders, such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism, and also to overeating.
The researchers comment that this finding confirms the theory about the influence of the mother’s obesity on the development of the baby’s brain , which would explain why cognitive and metabolic health problems have been found more frequently in other studies in children born to mothers with a high BMI.
Once again, science explains why if we want to conceive, it is important to try to do it in the best way possible by maintaining a healthy weight and good habits before and during pregnancy , since the health of not only the mother will depend on it, but also also of the baby.
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Via | Science Daily
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