A latest study has suggested that younger siblings could be good for your health. The longitudinal study tracked roughly 700 children throughout the US. The researchers discovered that the kids, who didn’t have a sibling till they were in first grade, have more chances of being obese at that age in comparison to children, who got a sibling in the ages between three and four.

Basically, the birth of a sibling some years into the life of a child was linked to a healthier body mass index (BMI) trajectory for the first child. The study has appeared recently in the journal Pediatrics.

They pointed out that they aren’t claiming that the birth of a sibling directly leads to weight loss but yes, there is a relation. The researchers mentioned that further study is needed to strengthen the findings. The unexpectedly strong relation provoked the study’s authors to wonder what factors might have been behind it.

An author on the study, Dr. Julie Lumeng, a pediatrician at the C.S. Mott Hospital at the University of Michigan, said that the likelihood that seems most convincing is that in case you have a younger sibling, you’re will probably run around more.

In simple words, the presence of a younger sibling is like presence of a built-in playmate. It could be any part of the day when the siblings could indulge into some type of active play.

There is one more theory, though slightly harder to prove, which says that with the arrival of a second child, parents start loosen up, which means they put into action less restrictive feeding practices for the little ones.

Kind of counter-intuitively, earlier research has indicated that the more a parent limits a child’s eating, the more is obesity risk. It could be the case that parental control hinders the little ones from learning to listen to their own hunger signals, boosting unhealthy eating habits.