Can sugar exposure during pregnancy affect long-term heart disease risk? US doctor explains the link

While early nutrition is important, a study has revealed that sugar exposure during pregnancy can affect the heart health of the baby decades later.

Sugar is often discussed in the context of adult diets and lifestyle diseases, but growing evidence suggests that its impact may begin far earlier than most people realise. Nutrition in early life - starting in the womb and continuing through infancy - can quietly shape long-term health outcomes, including the risk of heart disease decades later.

Dr Sood explains the link between early sugar exposure and heart disease. (Unsplash)

Highlighting how early dietary exposure may leave lasting biological imprints, Dr Kunal Sood - an anaesthesiologist and interventional pain medicine physician - has drawn attention to emerging research on sugar intake during the first 1,000 days of life. In an Instagram video shared on January 9, the physician explains how early sugar exposure may influence cardiovascular health well into adulthood, challenging conventional thinking around when heart disease risk truly begins.

Early sugar exposure study

According to Dr Sood, while most people recognise that early nutrition plays a role in long-term health, few realise just how powerfully sugar exposure in the first 1,000 days of life can influence heart health decades later. He points to a natural experiment in the United Kingdom, where sugar was strictly rationed for pregnant women and infants, offering rare insight into how early dietary patterns can shape cardiovascular risk much later in life.

He explains, “Researchers recently took advantage of a unique natural experiment in the United Kingdom when sugar was strictly rationed for women who were pregnant and infants. They followed these birth cohorts into adulthood and compared people exposed to very low sugar during the first 10,000 days of life from conception through age 2 with those born just after sugar rationing ended.”

What did the study find?

Dr Sood highlights that the findings of the study were striking - sugar restriction in early life significantly lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease. He elaborates, “Individuals with early life sugar restriction had significantly lower risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke and cardiovascular death. The longer the early sugar restriction lasted, the stronger the protective effect appeared to be. Even more interesting was the disease onset was delayed by two to three years and cardiac MRI later in life showed small but favourable differences in heart structure and function.”

However, the physician stresses that these findings are based on observational evidence and do not prove that sugar alone directly causes or prevents disease. That said, the consistency of the results, combined with strong biological plausibility, suggests that early-life nutrition may programme cardiovascular development in ways researchers are only beginning to fully understand.

Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. It is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.