Senin, 22 Juni 2009

Is the baby getting too fat?

With today's focus the obesity problem, peoples are starting to ask if a little baby
fat showed that infants were getting enough of the right nutrients or maybe there is problem with his/her health.
Is the baby growing properly? Is the baby getting too fat? How do you know between overweight and healthy/normal growth?

One doctor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia believes that the problem of obesity starts as early as the first few months of our life. He has been combing through records of thousands of babies born in the early 1960s and has found that the amount of weight that children gain in the first four months of life is linked to childhood obesity at age 7, regardless of birth weight or if they were overweight at a year old.

“You can't predict overweight in kids in the first six months," says Frank Greer, professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on nutrition. "We don't want mothers calorie-counting." So if the baby looks fat doesn't mean that he needs to go on a diet. Furthermore, putting a baby on a diet would be dangerous. Because cells, especially those that surround budding brain cells, need fat to support and nurture them. As long as your baby is gaining both height and weight, weight gain shouldn't be a problem.



If your child's weight begins to increase faster than her height, though, you should immediately discuss it with your baby's doctor.
The doctor will compare your child's height and weight with standardized norms for children in the same sex and age. The doctor will also look at your child's weight in relation to his/her height on the growth chart.







Until you get a professional opinion about your infant's growth, don't make any changes to his diet. You need the expert to know the difference between normal and overweight.
Be aware about medical consequences for childhood with obesity.


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