I was reading an article on Time.com about new discoveries in human feotal
development, and a paragraph struck my eye:

"But of all the long-term health threats, maternal undernourishment—which
stunts growth even when babies are born full term—may top the list. "People
who are small at birth have, for life, fewer kidney cells, and so they are
more likely to go into renal failure when they get sick," observes Dr. David
Barker, director of the environmental epidemiology unit at England's
University of Southampton. The same is true of insulin-producing cells in the
pancreas, so that low-birth-weight babies stand a higher chance of developing
diabetes later in life because their pancreases—where insulin is produced—have
to work that much harder. Barker, whose research has linked low birth weight
to heart disease, points out that undernourishment can trigger lifelong
metabolic changes. In adulthood, for example, obesity may become a problem
because food scarcity in prenatal life causes the body to shift the rate at
which calories are turned into glucose for immediate use or stored as
reservoirs of fat."

Well...! No wonder I've got a weight problem. (I weighed < 2 lbs at birth) and
I may have to worry about other problems down the road.  I wonder what
implications this has for CP research.

BTW, the link to the article:

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021111/story.html

Kat