A father who started smoking too early may be to blame for his child's obesity

Scientists from Britain have concluded that men who tried smoking at an early age (before 11 years) will have children who are prone to obesity. This study once again confirms the fact that the lifestyle of parents directly affects the health of future offspring. As scientists note, tobacco smoke that enters a man's body before puberty can lead to metabolic disorders in the next generation. As the leading researcher of this scientific project believes, the newly discovered intergenerational effect of tobacco smoke will help to study modern obesity problems in more depth, and will also help in prevention.

According to some data, the number of smokers in many countries is decreasing, but according to the World Health Organization, about a billion men smoke worldwide. Despite the fact that a number of previous studies on both animals and humans have established an intergenerational effect on health as a result of tobacco smoke, all evidence has so far been limited. This research project indicates that tobacco smoke triggers processes in the body that, under the influence of ecology, lifestyle, etc., can turn on or off some genes in descendants. Scientists began this study after the work of Swedish colleagues who found a relationship between overeating in a man and the mortality rate of his grandchildren. For their work, specialists received access to data on the lifestyle, health, and genetics of almost 10 thousand men.

During the observation of subsequent generations, scientists found that the sons of those men who tried cigarettes before the age of 11 had the highest body mass index in adolescence (13-17 years) compared to those children whose fathers started smoking at a later age or did not smoke at all. At the same time, such an effect was not noted in daughters. Now independent experts are in no hurry to draw conclusions. As one nutritionist believes, such a discovery will allow us to take a different look at the factors that provoke obesity in childhood.

But all these studies only indicate a connection between early smoking of the father and obesity in the son, but there is no exact confirmation of this. Geneticists note that the data is quite convincing, but a number of additional studies should be conducted to confirm the connection between smoking and changes in epigenetics in the child's DNA.

Today, fewer and fewer healthy children are born in the world, and tobacco smoke is not the only reason for this. However, scientists have now established that the more popular smoking was, the more children were born with congenital diseases of the respiratory system. In this case, we are not only talking about tobacco smoke, which enters the body of a pregnant woman (during passive or active smoking) and leads to pathologies of the fetus or premature birth. The greatest danger of smoking is that long-term smoking causes mutations in the body, which are also passed on to the next generations. In the course of research, it was found that smokers have a disruption in the normal functioning of more than a hundred genes, including genes related to DNA, and these processes are already irreversible.

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