Don't Sleep Much in Third Trimester? Your Baby May Be Fat, Later in Life
Something new to blame mothers for! A new study has found that p oor-quality sleep during the third trimester of pregnancy can increase the odds of weight gain and metabolic abnormalities in offspring once they reach adulthood, according to newswise.com. By 24 weeks the sons of sleep-disturbed mothers weighed about 10 percent more than the sons of mice with uninterrupted sleep. “Disrupted sleep is a common problem during the final trimester of a pregnancy,” the Web site quotes study director, sleep specialist David Gozal, MD, the Herbert T Abelson professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago. “For some women, sleep fragmentation, especially sleep apnea, can be profound. We wanted to devise a system that enabled us to measure the potential impact of fragmented sleep on the fetus, which is uniquely susceptible so early in life.” The researchers interrupted sleep for half of the mice in the study during days 15 through 19 of pregnancy, the mouse equivalent of the thi...