Over 50% of pregnant women are overweight or obese. But being overweight doesn’t just affect your life, your health; it can affect your unborn baby’s too.
A new study shows that obese women who undergo weight loss surgery before conceiving are less likely to have overweight children. The study, conducted in Canada, showed that the children of women who had undergone gastric band surgery were slimmer than their siblings who were born before the surgery.

Ok, so children born after surgery are slimmer, but that could just be to do with the changed lifestyle and diet habits of the Mom, right? Apparently not. According to the study, children born after weight loss surgery were genetically different to their pre-surgery brothers and sisters. Researchers say this is because the siblings were ‘marinated’ in different levels of fat and sugar, which in turn affected their genetic coding. So could obesity be attributed to genetics after all?

Genetics vs Lifestyle

Diet and exercise are indisputably at the very center of an adult or child’s health, weight and fitness. This study, however, indicates that high levels of sugar and fat in the mother’s blood during pregnancy can lead to genetic alterations, making pre-weight loss surgery siblings more likely to be obese, diabetic or suffer from heart problems than their post-surgery counterparts. Continuing good diet and exercise will be essential to maintain good health but it is likely that the post-surgery siblings are at a distinct advantage when it comes to staying slim and healthy, for life.

The Study

In this innovative Canadian study, researchers tested the blood of children born to 20 obese women before and after they had weight loss surgery. On average, the women lost around 100 pounds after surgery.
The scientists compared the chemical tags in nearly 6,000 genes of the children and found differences between siblings in the activity of genes known to affect the metabolism of blood sugar. These genetic changes made the pre-surgery siblings more likely to develop heart disease.
In general, children born after the Mom had had surgery were lighter than their siblings and had a lower risk of developing heart disease and diabetes later on in life.

Weight Loss Surgery Choices

The benefits of weight loss surgery are becoming more widely acknowledged and extend beyond benefitting the parents to benefitting their children too. Weight Loss Surgery Mexico offers a broad range of state of the art weight loss surgery procedures, including gastric bypass surgery, gastric sleeve surgery, lap band surgery and the cutting edge greenzone plication surgery. The range of choice and excellent quality of care mean that we help patients to choose the best weight loss surgery for them. This results in safer, long lasting and more successful weight loss surgery procedures.

If you are obese and would like help to lose weight, to change your lifestyle and to get healthy, for you and for your kids, contact us for a free consultation about how weight loss surgery could change your life.