Is air pollution the main cause of obesity in children?
Childhood Obesity Causes: It is a common belief about children that those who eat more junk food become obese quickly. But it is not so. Obesity has nothing to do with junk food, whereas its real cause is air pollution. This has been revealed in a research. According to research, air pollution can become a cause of childhood obesity. This pollution spoils the impulse control of children.
Research has said that children who are exposed to neurotoxins i.e. excessive pollution at the time of birth or in the early days, find it more difficult to control their desires later on. This is the first research in which it has been found that everyday air pollution can increase obesity in children, because due to this their brain loses the ability to control impulses. Polluted air affects the brain of children and makes them weak in controlling their appetite or desire to eat, which leads to obesity.
In research, particulate matter 2.5 i.e. PM2.5 has been linked to obesity. PM 2.5 is a type of neurotoxin. This can cause great harm to the brain of children. Researchers say it can also cause obesity. Mount Sinai researchers said that for the first time they identified impulse control as a possible pathway.
If children live in dirty air with high PM 2.5 content in the first year of birth, then later they have more difficulty in controlling their desires. Due to this, at the age of four to eight years, more fat accumulates in the body of those children and their BMI increases. Co-author Jamil Lane of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said most research on obesity focuses only on diet and exercise. In this, the pollution spread in the air is ignored.
Lane further said that our study is new and special in this sense because we are showing that due to excessive exposure to dirty air at an early age, children become weak in controlling their desires, due to which they start gaining weight. Overall, dirty air not only harms the lungs, but can also affect the child's brain and behavior and increase the risk of obesity.
Let us tell you that PM2.5 are very small particles present in the air. These particles keep flying in the air for a long time. It is considered a possible cause of cancer. These particles are formed from the smoke emitted from cars and vehicles. These are made of solid or liquid. It has a bad effect on health. PM2.5 can also increase obesity. It spoils the metabolism of the body, due to which weight increases easily.
Mount Sinai scientist Bob Wright said that he tried to find out through research whether PM2.5 present in the air affects the brain of children and increases their impulsivity. For this, he studied 434 children born in Mexico City in 2007-08. In this they found that excessive air pollution in the womb and in the first year after birth affects the brain of children, due to which they are unable to control impulses and this can increase the risk of obesity.
Researchers say that pollution causes changes in the brain, due to which eating habits get spoiled and children can move towards obesity. Some shortcomings have also been accepted in this study. The number of children in the research was less.
