Our project is on The Wenner-Gren Foundation website

Give it a look...that's us

http://www.wennergren.org/node/5910

In this photo, some of the children we assessed. The girl on the left has a BioScan electrode stuck on her face. These electrodes were a constant source of amusement for the children.

Fieldwork in 2010

Just added two new pages. One with details of our fieldwork during 2010
http://bemicelu.blogspot.com/p/fieldwork-2010.html
and other with information about the training sessions we run at CINVESTAV for 4 days. However, for some reason, I was unable to upload photos on this one. I will try again later. Enjoy!

Short stature of the Maya

Hannah took this photo on April 2010. It's another example of how short Maya women are...
There was this idea, for a while, that Maya were genetically short and that they were basically "fine" and that's "just the way they are"...This is not true.

The Maya have been suffering for a long time. The Maya carry a legacy of poverty, social-political-economical pressure and poor health that is reflected in their physical growth, mainly in their height, as well as in many other health aspects.

Our research with Maya migrants in Florida (Bogin et al 2002) has shown that Maya children who migrated to the USA are, on average, 11cm taller than their counterparts in Guatemala. These results show the powerful effects of the environment on physical growth. Read more here.  

Bogin B, Smith P, Orden AB, Varela Silva MI, Loucky J. (2002) Rapid change in height and body proportions of Maya American children.

Am J Hum Biol. 2002 Nov-Dec;14(6):753-61.

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12400036

(copyright Hannah Wilson, 2010)

A new page has been created

A new page has been created. Check it out "Our Research Team"...with nice photos. More soon.

The Biosocial Society

Ines is also the Chair of the Biosocial Society.
For more information go to http://www.biosocsoc.org/
or follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/biosocsoc

Low birthweight - negative effects that stick for a long time

In 2007 Hugo took this picture in Merida. The boy in the red shorts is older than his brother in grey shorts. However, he is shorter. He was born with low birthweight.

Some of our data published in 2009: Height, Weight, BMI and Birthweight of the children and Mother's height and age at pregnancy

In 2006 Hugo collected data in the southern part of Merida, among a group of Maya. He assessed 206 children and their mothers. The basic anthropometric data of the children, mother's height and mother's age at pregnancy are as follow:

There are high levels of childhood stunting (chronic malnutrition) - 21.8%
There are high levels of childhood overweight - 33%
There are very high levels of maternal stunting - 70.9%

These findings classify the Maya in the Southern part of Merida as a group suffering from nutrition dual-burden (coexistence of chronic malnutrition and overweight/obesity.

For research purposes please cite:

Influence of maternal stature, pregnancy age, and infant birth weight on growth during childhood in Yucatan, Mexico: a test of the intergenerational effects hypothesis.

Varela-Silva MI, Azcorra H, Dickinson F, Bogin B, Frisancho AR.

Am J Hum Biol. 2009 Sep-Oct;21(5):657-63.PMID: 19214997 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

More about height

This is a photo taken in Mérida, in April 2010. There's Inês with a grandmother and her granddaughter. "Tall" is not the first word that crosses one's mind when mentioning Inês - she is only 159 cm (because she was born during the fascist dictatorship in Portugal - and dictatorships in general have a powerful "shrinkage effect", but this is another story). The point here is that Inês, being short, looks tall in comparison to the Maya grandmother.

Read more here
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19214997

Varela-Silva MI, Azcorra H, Dickinson F, Bogin B, Frisancho AR (2009). Influence of maternal stature, pregnancy age, and infant birth weight on growth during childhood in Yucatan, Mexico: a test of the intergenerational effects hypothesis. American Journal of Human Biology 21(5):657-63. 

Rapid change in height and body proportions of May... [Am J Hum Biol. 2002 Nov-Dec] - PubMed result

Rapid change in height and body proportions of May... [Am J Hum Biol. 2002 Nov-Dec] - PubMed result

Economic and anthropological assessments of the he... [Econ Hum Biol. 2003] - PubMed result

Economic and anthropological assessments of the he... [Econ Hum Biol. 2003] - PubMed result

Stature of Maya groups in Guatemala, Mexico and the USA

We have published several papers focusing on the height of Maya groups in Guatemala, Mexico and in the USA. Maya groups in Mexico and in Guatemala are very short due to very hard living conditions, poor health and socioeconomic and political repression. For many years the Maya were considered the "Pygmies" of Latin-America and their short stature was assumed to be a genetic trait.
However, when our group measured a group of Maya who have migrated to Indiantown, Florida we found a very deep increase in stature - about 11cm in less then 10 years.  Better living conditions, more education, basic health, vaccination, clean drinking water and a safer environment in general result in dramatic changes in height. On the other hand, a great percnetage of Maya in the USA are overweight or obese and this brings about a cascade of health problems that need to be addressed.
Check out our papers:

Life history trade-offs in human growth: adaptatio... [Am J Hum Biol. 2007 Sep-Oct] - PubMed result

Life history trade-offs in human growth: adaptatio... [Am J Hum Biol. 2007 Sep-Oct] - PubMed result

Our research team

We are a group of Human Biologists, Anthropologists, Human Ecologists and Nutritionists who  study child growth and health in several parts of the world.
The BEMICELU project has been running in Mérida, Mexico since January 2010. We aim to identify several components of early life malnutrition that lead to health impairments (especially overweight/obesity) in adulthood.

The project leader is Dr Inês Varela-Silva (http://myprofile.cos.com/inesvs)

The other members are:

Prof Barry Bogin (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/staff/academic/barry-bogin.html)
Dr. Federico Dickinson (http://www.mda.cinvestav.mx/personal_eco/dickinson.htm)
Ms Hannah Wilson (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/staff/research-students/hannah-wilson.html)
Mr Hugo Azcorra (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/staff/research-students/hugo-azcorra.html).

We are based at the Centre for Global Health and Human Development - Loughborough University (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/research/centres-institutes/global-health/index.html) and at the Centre for Human Ecology - CINVESTAV Mérida, Mexico (http://www.mda.cinvestav.mx/eh02.htm).


This project has been financed by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (http://www.wennergren.org/) and by the Santander Bank.

Some photos of the fieldwork (February-July 2010)

Inês and three little girls

Inês, Hannah and four of our participants

During the Spring Festival in one of the schools. Beautiful