BMI can be used in the fight against childhood obesity – the Swedish newspaper svenska Dagbladet

Now those who work in child health care; use of an objective tool to predict very early which children they should be a little more observant, ” says Susann Regber, a lecturer in nursing at Halmstad university, which is one of the researchers in the large european study.

A child will usually have a peak in their BMI-development (Body Mass Index) at the age of nine months and a fall at the age of six, and then go up again. But the study shows that some children do not have this pattern, and often they have a BMI curve which is above the average.

– Now we have research that shows that BMI-curve can be used more extensively. You can then go in and support the parents of children who constantly lies above the average, and talk about, for example, health habits, rather than to wait until they are nine–ten years old and already has obesity that requires treatment, ” says Susann Regber.

the Study is made

on the more than 4 700 children, from birth to eight years, from seven european countries, of which more than 1,800 children from Sweden. At least four viktmätningar has been made on each individual child and in total, nearly 38 000 occasion.