Dieting Just Before Pregnancy Harmful For Obese Women: Study

Dieting before pregnancy is harmful for obese women and can result in poor metabolic consequences for the babies, a latest research reveals.

The study, published in 'The FASEB Journal,' also revealed dieting just before pregnancy cannot prevent risk of diabetes and it may lead to developing new health risks.  According to researchers, although women try to lose weight just before pregnancy, epigenetic damage due to obesity might have already been done.

"The findings of our study highlight that the nutritional health of the mother in the lead-up to and around conception can result in poor metabolic consequences for the offspring that will persist into later life," Caroline McMillen, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Sansom Institute for Health Research at the University of South Australia, said in a news release.

"We hope that the findings of the present study will lead to a focus on how to help obese women lose weight in order to improve their fertility in a manner which does not impact negatively on the health outcomes of their offspring," McMillen said.

The researchers studied four groups of pregnant sheep. The first group had over-nourished sheep from four months before conception and continued till one week of pregnancy. Sheep in the second group were over-nourished for three months and then placed on a diet for one month before and one week after conception. The sheep in the third group were put on a normal or control diet from four months prior conception and until one week of pregnancy. The fourth group of sheep was fed a control diet for three months and later put on a diet for one month before conception, until one week after conception.

The team then transferred embryos of all these sheep to normal weight, normally nourished sheep for the rest of the pregnancy. They also studied the liver samples of the lambs born at four months of age to examine their genes and proteins.

"This discovery helps us to understand how body weight affects our health and the health of our children-right down to the genetic level," Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, said. "Clearly this effect must be confirmed in humans, but the study should help us to optimize a hopeful mom's management of how and when to lose weight to have a healthy child."

The findings could help the health experts to provide proper prenatal strategies to improve the health of newborns.