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Dr. Ula: Your health, their future

How your health is shaping your children — for life.


We don’t inherit health. We inherit habits. And habits are built, not born.

If you’re a parent, your metabolic health — how your body handles blood sugar, fat, hormones, stress, and sleep — isn’t just your business. It’s your legacy.

The science is clear: the way you eat, sleep, move, and manage stress doesn’t just affect you. It writes the biological script your kids will live by — from the moment they’re conceived to the day they become parents themselves.
This isn’t guilt. It’s power. You can change the story.

Five stages where your health shapes theirs

Let’s break it down. Here’s how your metabolic health affects your kids at every major developmental milestone:

Preconception: Before you even know you're expecting

  • Your metabolic state affects the quality of sperm, eggs, and the genetic signals passed on.

  • Epigenetics means your body sends signals that shape how your children’s genes turn on or off — before pregnancy even begins. Study: Paternal obesity alters gene expression in offspring (Soubry, 2015).

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Pregnancy: What you eat, they become

  • High blood sugar, insulin resistance, and inflammation in pregnancy shape your baby’s fat storage, organ development, and brain wiring.

  • This isn’t about eating perfectly — it’s about understanding your body’s signals and supporting the womb environment.

    Study: Maternal glucose levels directly predict newborn adiposity (HAPO Study, 2008).


Infancy: The mirror stage

  • Your baby learns how to eat, sleep, and move by watching you

  • Your metabolic health influences breastfeeding quality, feeding patterns, and the early gut microbiome.

Study: Parental obesity strongly predicts obesity in preschoolers (Woo Baidal, 2016).


Childhood: The copy-paste years

  • Kids copy what they see. Movement, meals, screen time, sleep — it’s all modelled

  • Metabolic stress in parents often creates a home environment of low energy, poor food quality, and emotional volatility.

    Study: Sedentary parenting linked to high child BMI (Gable, 2000).


Adolescence: The stress test

  • Teen years amplify risk. Hormones. Habits. Peer pressure. The groundwork laid in earlier years now shows up in mental health, resilience, and metabolic function.

  • Your ongoing stress and lifestyle still shapes their stress response, decision-making, and health markers.

    Study: Teens of parents with Type 2 diabetes show early signs of metabolic syndrome (Franks, 2010).


So what now?


If that sounds daunting — good. It should matter. But here’s the upside: Now you can flip the script.


This isn’t about perfection. It’s about momentum. Small, deliberate changes in your health can ripple out across generations. You’re not just fighting for your own health. You’re designing a different future for the people you love most. Health is generational. It’s written in DNA. Modelled in daily life. Reinforced across time.


Book your Discovery Consultation and start building a health legacy worth passing on.





Dr. Ula Co-Founder and Lead Physician, Autonomy

 


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