Baby fat may hinder crawling and walking--study
POSTED April 1, 2010 - 17:42 | POSTED BY Neharika Sabharwal
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on April 1, 2010 - 19:48
Experts theorize that pudgy infants may be slower than their thinner counterparts in developing motor skills, which include lifting one’s head, rolling over, sitting up, balancing, crawling and walking, as they tend to be less physically active because of the excess weight they lug around.
Lead author of the study, Meghan Slining, nutrition doctoral student at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill stated, “This is concerning because children with motor skill delays may be less physically active and thus less likely to explore the environment beyond arm’s reach.”
Details of the study
In an effort to determine how parenting and infant feeding styles relate to infant diet and the risk of babies becoming obese the researchers undertook an “Infant Care, Feeding and Risk of Obesity Study.”
They tracked 217 African-American infants and their first-time mothers. During each home visit the investigators documented each child’s ability to perform on different age-appropriate skills.
The babies were weighed and measured for their height between 2003 and 2007. Additionally, they were evaluated for their motor skills at the ages of three, six, nine, 12 and 18 months.
Findings of the study
The researchers found that overweight infants were 1.8 times to underscore on the Psychomotor Development Index test, exhibiting a delay in motor development when compared to the thinner babies.
Moreover, babies with high levels of baby fat under their skin were more than twice as likely (2.32 times) to score poorly as opposed to the kids without excess baby fat.
Slining stated, "There are a number of studies that show that weight status during the infancy and toddler years can set young children on an obesity trajectory that may be hard to change. Our study shows that there are actually immediate consequences as well."
The study was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Mead Johnson Children's Nutrition Small Research Grants Program at UNC.
The details were published online in The Journal of Pediatrics.
