Women whose grandfathers or great-grandfathers smoked before puberty have higher than average body fat levels.
- The consequences of tobacco do not only affect the smoker, but also their descendants.
- In France, the first cigarette is smoked at age 14, on average.
- A smoker weighs between 4 and 5 kilos less, compared to a non-smoker.
Passive smoking is not the only danger for those around smokers. Tobacco has consequences on the offspring of male smokers. According to a study published in Scientific Reports, women’s body fat percentage is higher when their ancestors were early smokers. Previous research, done in animal models, has shown that exposing males to certain chemicals before they mate can have effects on their offspring. In this study, the scientists wanted to verify this hypothesis on tobacco.
Women suffer the consequences of their ancestors’ smoking
In work published in 2014, the team discovered that if a father started smoking regularly before reaching puberty, which is before age 11, then his sons had more body fat than average, but not his daughters. This time, the authors, researchers from the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, were interested in the previous generations, ie the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers. They relied on a database, called “1990s kids”. It tracks the health status of people born in 1990, as well as that of their family members. In total, this allowed them to obtain medical information on more than 14,000 people. British scientists find that body fat percentage is higher in women whose paternal grandfathers or great-grandfathers started smoking before the age of 13 compared to those whose ancestors started smoking later in childhood (13 to 16 years). This was not the case when the descendants were male.
Tobacco makes you fat!
“This research provides us with two important results.summarizes Jean Golding, the main author of the study. First, before puberty, a boy’s exposure to substances can have an effect on the generations that follow him. Second, one of the reasons why children become obese may not have to do with their current diet and exercise so much as it does with the lifestyle of their ancestors or the persistence of risk factors in the past. over the years.” Especially since the links between tobacco and obesity have already been proven. In 2011, researchers from the University of Lausanne showed that smokers have more belly fat than non-smokers, even though they often weigh less. As tobacco consumption increases, the risk of weight gain becomes higher. “L‘heavy’ smokers (i.e. smokers who smoke more than 25 cigarettes a day) weigh more than smokers who smoke less”, specify the authors. According to them, their lifestyle could be an explanation: smokers are generally more sedentary, eat less healthily and consume more alcohol, compared to non-smokers.
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