A recent study performed by scientists with the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that antibiotics cause children to gain weight faster.
The researchers that are behind this study have found that children who have taken seven or eight times more antibiotics that usual during their childhood, had gained around three pounds by the time they reached the age of 15.
These are the children that were given antibiotics on a regular basis by their parents. What the study shows is the fact that they gained weight faster than other children of the same age, mainly because of the antibiotic intake.
The science behind this explains how antibiotics, especially in large or frequent quantities disturb the microbiota. The microbiota is made up of all the microorganisms in our body, which are essential to its well-functioning. If disturbed, this community of microorganism can change the way our body absorbs its nutrients from food and beverages.
A disturbed nutrient absorbing process can, in turn, lead to weight gain.
But this is not a new fact. Actually, it has been known for a while, although it did not concern children up until now. It has been a known fact that taking antibiotics makes you add a few pounds and animal breeders and large food producers are the ones who benefitted from it most. It has long been talked about the way food companies introduce small amounts of antibiotics to poultry, for example, in order to force them to grow bigger and faster.
The difference is we are now talking about children and the effects it has on them. Therefore, giving them antibiotics might solve one problem, and killing off the virus that is currently bugging them, but it may also cause another one. Of course, one may argue that taking any kind of medicine has its side effects, but these side effects are something worthy to take into consideration.
Because weight gain will affect the children not only while they are small, but also after they grow up and become fully-fledged adults, studies have shown. Therefore, scientists advise antibiotics should be given to children occasionally and definitely not for any little ailment they might have. It is just another way of helping them and preventing them of suffering from adult obesity.
This study has been performed on close to 164 000 children, between the ages of 3 and 18, by analyzing their medical records.
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