Boys who are diagnosed with ADHD may be at an increased risk of obesity later in life, says a new study from researchers at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center.
The study dates back to 1970, when researchers began following over 200 boys diagnosed with ADHD and 178 boys without. The boys had an average age of 8 at the time of their diagnosis and average age of 41 at the end of the study.
They found that those who had been diagnosed with ADHD as boys were twice as likely to be considered obese:
"One possibility is that as a group [children with ADHD] are much more impulsive than other children and young people. Because of that impulsivity they tend to overeat, and that continues and builds on itself," lead researcher Rachel Klein told the Daily News. "Once that happens it's hard to reverse it."
"These brain circuits are believed to underly impulse control and reward response, so you can't resist something that's pleasurable and you can't control your tendency to want to do what's pleasurable," Klein adds. "The same underlying neural pathways have been spoken about in both instances."
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