Anorexia could be determined by exposure to sex hormones in the womb, reported The Times on New Year’s Eve. The female sex hormone oestrogen “may be overproduced by some mothers, affecting the baby’s brain and making it susceptible to the eating disorder”, the newspaper said.
The newspaper reports are based on research into twins that has found that, although anorexia occurs more often in females than males, when they looked at twin pairs of different sexes, males who had shared the womb with a female were ten times more likely to develop anorexia in later life than if they had been in the womb with another male. However, anorexia is a complex psychological condition, and this research cannot prove that the higher rate of anorexia amongst girls, and boys of mixed twin pregnancies, is caused by higher exposure to sex hormones in the womb, and not by a number of other genetic, environmental or social factors.
Being overweight may not be as unhealthy as it was 40 years ago," BBC News reports. New research has found a body mass index (BMI) of 27 is linked to the lowest rate of death – but someone with a BMI of 27 is currently classed as being overweight. BMI is a score calculated by dividing your weight (usually in kilograms) by the square of your height (usually in metres and centimetres). Currently, a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as being overweight. Researchers looked at 120,528 people from Copenhagen, recruited from 1976 to 2013, and separately compared those recruited during the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s. They were followed up until they died, emigrated, or the study finished. The BMI linked to the lowest risk of having died from any cause was 23.7 in the 1970s group, 24.6 in the 1990s group, and had further risen to 27 in the 2003-13 group. It may be the case that the suggested upward shift in optimal BMI is the result of improvements in preventative treatments for weight-rela...