Antibiotics and Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is epidemic and the days when children ran about and played outside and were as slim as whippets are long gone. Parents need to take special care of their children’s health and exercise.
Following recent research it’s good to question factors other than the food we eat and see how they can affect the growing body.
In a recent study it was shown that antibiotics play a role in childhood obesity: So let’s work out how that can be.
Bacteria plays a role in how nutrients from food are absorbed by the body. Antibiotics kill harmful bacteria causing problems in the body; but the antibiotics also normally affect beneficial bacteria in the gut as well as the pathogens they are being dosed to target.
The use of antibiotics in young children might lead to a higher risk of obesity, and two new studies, one on mice and one on humans, conclude that changes of the intestinal bacteria caused by antibiotics could be responsible for increased weight gain.
Both studies focus on the early age, because that is when obesity begins.
Researchers found that children, who were given antibiotics in their first six months of life were more likely to be obese later in life.
The difference was most pronounced at an age of three and tended to be less pronounced as the child grew older, at about seven.
There is increasing evidence that the bacteria in our gut have an influence on our health, including how much we weigh.
So what happens when antibiotics knock out some of the good bacteria that help us?
A study finds that antibiotics make young mice fatter by changing the mix of their gut bacteria. Another report published in the International Journal of Obesity, suggests that these findings may have implications for people too.
Could routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock also have contributed to the wave of human obesity?
Since the 1950s farm animals in the United States have routinely been given low doses of antibiotics and this has been shown to promote larger animals; reportedly increasing their size of by up to 10 percent.
Farmers used antibiotics to treat infections, but then they were surprised that even in the absence of disease, this led to bigger animals. In a study, young mice treated with low doses of antibiotics became obese.
There may be many factors that have caused the obesity problem that we need to be aware of. Typically we consider obesity an epidemic grounded in unhealthy diet and exercise, yet increasingly studies suggest it's more complicated.
These studies are not saying that children with severe infections should not be treated with antibiotics, but these findings just reinforce the need for careful use of them.
I would always try to feed my family meat from a good trusted local source even if it was more expensive. Organic farms do not routinely give animals antibiotics as can happen in some factory farms. Also the better the animals conditions the less likely they are to need antibiotics.

Healthy Recipe of the Week
Avocado Salsa Fajitas
Ingredients
Chicken Breasts
Spicy Tomato Salsa Sauce
Flour Tortillas
Avocado
Chili Powder
Paprika
Method
Cut the chicken into strips, and then roll them in chili powder and paprika. Then cook in a hot pan for 10 minutes.
Remove the frying pan from the heat. Then place the tortillas on top to warm them through.
Halve an avocado and scoop out the flesh. Mash with a fork and then mix with the salsa. Fill the tortillas with the chicken and salsa and avocado mix and enjoy!

Ask Alva
Should I give up smoking as I only smoke a few cigarettes a day?
— Manoj
The truth is, long term smokers can die 22 years earlier than they would have if they had not been smokers. Smoking causes around 86 percent of deaths from lung cancer, around 80 percent of deaths from bronchitis and emphysema, and about 17 percent of deaths from heart disease. More than a quarter of all cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking. So I will leave you to think about these figures but I would say, yes please do give up smoking and eat more fruit.
— Alva

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