Friday, February 05, 2010

Obesity and ADHD

Recent research has suggested that there is a link between mothers who are obese before they become pregnant and their children's risk of developing ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). This could be down to a number of factors. Mothers may gain weight because they are stressed and it is their stress rather than their weight problems that lead their children to develop ADHD; there may be a common genetic factor linking a tendency to obesity in mothers with a tendency towards ADHD in their children or obese mothers may be more likely to have obese children and it is the children's obesity that makes them more likely to have ADHD. Alina Rodriguez from Uppsala University in Sweden looked into this further in a study of 1,714 children and their mothers who were monitored from before the mother's pregnancy until their children were five. The study took into account the mother's circumstances (smoking, depression, 'life events', education, age and family structure), the child's birth weight and gestational age, whether the child was a boy or a girl, whether the parents had ADHD and if the child was overweight. Even after allowing for all these factors mothers who were overweight or obese before becoming pregnant were more likely to have children with attention problems. Being obese before becoming pregnant was associated with a doubling in the risk of one's children developing problems with 'emotional intensity' and managing emotions.

Rodriguez, Alina - Maternal pre-pregnancy obesity and risk for inattention and negative emotionality in children Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry February 2010, 51(2), 134-143

5 comments:

Tess Messer said...

I wonder if the study controlled for ADHD in the mother. The disease has a huge genetic component but having said that, a lack of dopamine is implicated in ADHD and high carbohydrate diets are said to temporarily increase dopamine. Could these moms have been self medicating??

Tess http://primarilyinattentiveadd.com

Mohican said...

Your site is being plagiarized by:

http://depressiono.com/

That site is also plagiarizing depressionmarathon where I posted a much more detailed explanation.

John Gale said...

Thanks for your comment Tess. I think it does say in my post that the researchers controlled for the parents' ADHD. My take on it would be that lack of exercise is a contributory factor to obesity and if the mums are sedentary their children are more likely to be inactive too. And I think there is a strong link between exercise and a reduction in ADHD symptoms.
Best Wishes,
John Gale,
Mental Health Update

John Gale said...

Thanks for the tipoff Mohican. Unfortunately I can't access the site you mentioned. I hope you have managed to sort your problem out but if that site is fairly poor quality I would hope people would come to ours rather than the plagiarists. But it is still a pretty low thing to do.
Best Wishes,
John Gale,
Mental Health Update

arnostginsberg said...

Different studies have hypothesized about the link between obesity and ADHD. One hypothesis is that dopamine comes into play in both conditions, thus linking them together. Researchers Benjamin Charles Campbell and Dan Eisenberg (2007) note that dopamine levels in the brain increase when food is present, even if the person does not eat it. Dopamine is linked to the reward system, causing a person to feel happy when there is an increase in levels. By activating the dopaminergic pathways, eating becomes a pleasurable task.

Regards,
http://www.mynetpharma.com