The Effect of Teen Boy’s Weight on Future Generations
The connection between our health and the future generations’ health was long assumed to be one of simple nurture in which children simply copied their parents’ health habits. The science of epigenetics, however, has opened up a much deeper understanding of these multi-generational patterns. In this very well done study, researchers elucidate the mechanism by which the body weight of male teens appears to alter genes that then influence the body weight of their future offspring. These generational changes are mediated through epigenetic mechanisms whereby little chemical markers placed on genes in the teen boys sperm are passed on to their children.
Prior studies mentioned in the paper provide a backdrop for the current study. In those studies, epidemiologic data showed a correlation between the body weight of males during their teen years and the incidence of asthma, obesity, and shorter height in their children years later. Normal genetics would clearly not be able to pass such traits on to their offspring, but epigenetic mechanisms could explain this correlation and turn it into causation.
As scientists began to understand epigenetic mechanisms, they realized that there is much more to intergenerational inheritance than just simple DNA code changes. Epigenetic mechanisms include different ways in which an organism’s genetic code has extra marks added to the code sequence. Genes are simply strings of little molecules called nucleotides of 4 different types, known shorthand as A, G, C, and T. These letters make up the genetic alphabet for all of us. Epigenetic marks use additional molecular subunits to attach to the DNA code. These extra marks do not change the actual code; instead, they alter whether or not that code gets translated into proteins and into actual traits of the organism.
In the actual study, they measured the patterns of these extra marks (methyl groups in this case) on boys at age 8 years (pre-puberty), at age of voice break (approximating pubertal onset), and age 30 years. They looked at thousands of genes, but found 2005 that were marked differently and associated with asthma risk, lung function, and body weight depending on whether or not the boy was overweight during their teen years.
In helping our patients and their families not only restore but continue healthier, more abundant lives, deeper understanding of the mechanisms helps us better educate parents on their children’s lifestyles. In our current world of fast food and easy overconsumption of processed food, it can be challenging, but when we begin to see the underlying science of epigenetics impacting our grandchildren, we can get motivated to guide our teens toward healthier eating habits and exercise so that their children, our grandchildren, have a lower risk of obesity down the road. Even if our parents passed on some less-than-ideal epigenetic markers to us, we can work to bring that family pattern to an end with healthier weights today. Those family traits of poor health can be changed.
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Original Article:
Negusse Tadesse Kitaba, Toril Mørkve Østergaard, Marianne Lønnebotn, Simone Accordini, Francisco Gómez Real, Andrei Malinovschi, Anna Oudin, Bryndis Benediktsdottir, Francisco Javier Callejas González, Leopoldo Palacios Gómez, Mathias Holm, Nils Oskar Jõgi, Shyamali C. Dharmage, Svein Magne Skulstad, Vivi Schlünssen, Cecilie Svanes, John W. Holloway. Father’s adolescent body silhouette is associated with offspring asthma, lung function and BMI through DNA methylation. Communications Biology, 2025; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s42003-025-08121-9
Thanks to Science Daily:
University of Southampton. “Boys who are overweight in their early teens risk passing on harmful epigenetic traits to future children.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 May 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250527124544.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
