Health risks - what the body size reveals

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Children are often bigger than their parents. This is no coincidence: people around the world have skyrocketed from generation to generation. The front runners are the Dutch: Dutch men are now 20 cm taller than they were 150 years ago.

"This trend was the reason for us to take a closer look at the importance of body size," says Prof. Norbert Stefan from the University Hospital Tübingen in an interview with Together with his multi-member research team, he has investigated which factors influence body growth and how it is related to our health.

Cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are common diseases these days. They all promote an unhealthy lifestyle: an unbalanced diet, little exercise, obesity and smoking. Now the researchers have been able to show that body size also has an influence on the risk of disease. "We already knew that body size influences mortality," write the experts. To find out why that is so, they evaluated epidemiological data from 1990 to 2015 from all over the world.

High growth, high risk of cancer

"We have discovered that tall people are less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes - but more likely to develop cancer," says Stefan. The data showed that for every 6.5 cm of height, the risk of cardiovascular mortality decreases by six percent. At the same time, however, cancer mortality rose by six percent. "If you compare the extremes, that is, the largest with the smallest, you will find differences in the disease rates of 20 to 25 percent," explains the researcher. They cannot be explained by risk factors such as obesity or smoking alone.

Body size is largely genetic, but it is also influenced by diet. The main reason for the increase in body size could be the oversupply of high-calorie food and animal proteins during the growth phases of a person - i.e. during embryonic development, in childhood and puberty. "The size of the Dutch may be related to their high consumption of dairy products," the experts speculate.

Activated growth factors

If a woman eats a diet rich in calories and high in animal protein during pregnancy, the so-called insulin-like growth factor (IGF) 1/2 system, which controls the production of growth factors, is particularly activated in the child. This increases cell growth and division, which stimulates the child's growth in size. But tumor cells also respond to the growth factors. Therefore, tall people are also at increased risk of cancer, especially breast cancer, colon cancer and black skin cancer.

Once the mechanism is activated, it affects the body for a lifetime, says Stefan. This is also confirmed by studies that show that women who grew very quickly as children or adolescents are more likely to develop breast cancer.

But the high-speed growth engine also has its good points: "Activating the growth factors before birth or in childhood also protects against insulin resistance, an increased fat content in the liver and thus against cardiovascular diseases and diabetes," explains Stefan.

Normal milk consumption during pregnancy

The researchers draw two conclusions from this: First, physicians should consider growth and height as factors when advising patients on their disease risk and preventive measures.

Second, while pregnant women should continue to replenish their calcium reserves, they shouldn't necessarily drink a lot of milk. “You can also do that with vegetables,” says Stefan. And if you don't like broccoli and the like, simply use calcium-rich mineral water.

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