Guest Author - Krissi Danielsson

In the last few months, I’ve seen several articles about a new study linking the state of being underweight with a higher risk of miscarriages. Here is one article that discusses this study by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEU20070112072926&eTitle=Utilities&rLink=0

This is not the first time body weight has been associated with miscarriage risks. Obesity is also supposed to be associated with miscarriage risks, as mentioned in the above article and in several studies, such as this one published in Human Reproduction in 2004: http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/7/1644

But wait! Reading only the above, it might be easy to start worrying or obsessing or having knee jerk reactions about this information and wondering whether it was a factor in your own loss(es). I’ve even encountered some stories of women being blamed by their doctors for their losses, and told they should lose 30 pounds before trying again. I have some things I’d like to say about this sensitive subject, because it’s a pet peeve of mine.

Women struggle over their weight a lot in modern culture. That’s not news. But I do think that the issue of weight is often oversimplified. Being overweight or underweight isn’t as simple as being because you eat too much or too little. Those of us who struggle with being overweight aren’t just slobs who lack self control and eat everything in sight, and I know that women who struggle with being underweight can often eat plates of food in the attempt to gain weight to no avail.

I think the media and the medical profession do us a disservice when they try to distill this down to being an issue of how much you do or don’t eat. Where’s the evidence that actual food intake is even what determines the miscarriage risk? Maybe it’s that women who are underweight are more likely to have some biological process at work that causes them to not absorb nutrients needed by the baby. Maybe women who are overweight have a tendency toward hormone imbalances that affect their ability to carry a pregnancy (and also cause them to retain weight more easily, case in point, the disorder PCOS).

We need more information. These studies are often based on correlation, and if you read much about scientific literature or statistics at all, you know that correlation does not mean causation. There can always be a third factor involved that causes both the weight issue and the tendency toward loss, and it’s not reasonable to assume without more evidence that problems with weight are actually the cause of anyone’s pregnancy loss.

If you are struggling with weight (under or over) and losses, it’s true that some kind of health factor might be at work here. If you have an understanding practitioner, consider taking your concerns to him or her and asking for an evaluation of whether this might be a clue to the puzzle of your loss.

But as someone who has had as many bad experiences with doctors as good, be sure to take with a grain of salt any suggestion that your body weight was a causative factor in your losses. Self blame is such a common response to loss. Even though we know in our head’s it’s not our fault – it’s easy to fall into the trap of zeroing in on any reason that it might be and using that as an excuse to blame yourself. Your body weight should not be that reason.