Consumer Reports Warns Pregnant Women Against Canned Tuna

Consumer Reports tested 42 samples of tuna from cans bought in and around New York and found that white tuna usually contains far more mercury than light tuna - and that women and children should be even more cautious about eating the fish.

After analyzing the tests, the magazine's fish-safety experts concluded that pregnant women should avoid eating all tuna as a precaution. Children over 45 lbs. should stick to no more than 12.5 ounces of light tuna or 4 ounces of white tuna a week, while lighter children should have no more than 4 ounces of light tuna or 1.5 ounces of white tuna.

Why the stricter warnings? Every sample that Consumer Reports tested had measurable levels of mercury, ranging from 0.018 to 0.774 parts per million (ppm). Samples of white tuna ranged from 0.217 ppm to 0.774 ppm and averaged 0.427 ppm — enough that by eating 2.5 ounces of any of the tested samples, a woman would exceed the daily mercury intake considered safe by the EPA.

Samples of light tuna ranged from 0.018 ppm to 0.176 ppm. That's low on average, but about half the tested samples contained enough mercury that eating a single can would exceed the EPA's limit for women of child-bearing age.

Indeed, it's the outliers that pose a particular danger, not so much the average. While light tuna especially on average doesn't contain that much mercury, there's the danger of spikes in certain samples — and there's no way for pregnant women to know if the canned tuna they're eating contains unusually high levels of mercury. But the Consumer Reports study shows that it is a real threat that cautious women should take seriously.

Of course, limiting your seafood intake has its own risks. Omega-3 fatty acids — found in fish — are thought to help in developing fetal nervous systems, and they're well-known to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. The National Fisheries Institute, a trade group, noted that none of the canned tuna it tested — even the outliers — exceeded the FDA's allowable limit of 1 ppm or more. (That's the point at which the FDA is allowed to pull products from the shelves, though that's never been done.)

Of course, the FDA's safety limits on mercury have long been considered too lax — and compared to the rest of the world, they are. It will be a long time before we have definitive science on just how much mercury pregnant women can be exposed to without ill effect, but most people would agree that this is a time for the precautionary principle.


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/07/consumer-reports-warns-on-mercury-in-canned-tuna/#ixzz17SG4UFbu

25% off Patemm Pads

Patemm would like to celebrate this holiday season by offering a 25% discount off all of their patented, award-winning, eco-friendly ROUND diaper changing systems.
 
Patemm pads are PVC, lead, phthalate, latex, BPA, and formaldehyde-FREE and make the perfect holiday gift or stocking stuffer (they fold up so nice and tidy they’ll actually fit in those stockings).  They are also still PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA!

Enter HOLIDAY at check-out when ordering from www.patemm.com.  Offer ends December 31, 2010.  In order to receive your patemm pad(s) by Christmas, be sure to order by Friday, December 17th.
 
LIKE them on and enter to win a FREE limited edition patemm pad!

Cell Phone Use in Pregnancy: Risks for Child?

Exposure to cell phones before birth and afterward may increase a child's risk for developing certain behavioral problems, including hyperactivity, inattention, and problems getting along with peers, a study suggests.

The new research does have limitations; the researchers point out that there aren’t enough data to say how, or even if, cell phone exposure may cause any behavioral problems in children.

“There are theories, but we do not know,” says study researcher Leeka Kheifets, PhD, a professor of epidemiology in the UCLA School of Public Health. “Exposure to the fetus is likely to be very low, so it’s unclear how it can influence fetal development.”

But taking some simple precautions to reduce exposure during pregnancy and among children seems prudent. “Be aware of your exposure and while the science develops, use precaution,” she tells WebMD. “It is very easy to reduce exposure by keeping your phone away from body and using a hands-free device, so why not do it?”

The researchers analyzed data on cell phone use from 28,745 7-year-olds and their moms who were part of the Danish National Birth Cohort study. The mothers provided information on their lifestyle including cell phone use during and after pregnancy. They were interviewed again about their kids’ cell phone habits and behavioral issues when their children turned 7.

They found that 35.2% of 7-year olds used a cell phone. Less than 1% of children used their cell phone for longer than one hour a week. Based on the reports by their mothers, the majority of children (93%) had no behavioral issues, 3.3% had borderline behavioral problems, and 3.1% showed signs of behavioral problems including emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, and relationship problems.

Close to 18% of children were exposed to cell phones during pregnancy and after birth, and this was the group with greatest risk for behavioral problems, the study suggests.

The new findings mirror those of an earlier, smaller study of about 13,000 children from the same Danish birth cohort.

Going forward, Kheifets plans to look at the children when they turn 11 and see if the findings still hold. Children will be able to answer questions regarding their cell phone use for themselves by the time they are 11.

The time to act is now, says Devra Davis, PhD, MPH, the founder of Environmental Health Trust, a group that educates the public about environmental health risks and pushes for policy changes needed to reduce these risks. She is also the author of Disconnect: The Truth about Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.

“Pregnant women should be careful about exposure for lots of reasons, not this study. Warnings actually appear on phones that say pregnant woman should avoid exposure to their abdomen,” she says.

“Do not keep it on your abdomen, use it with a headset or speaker phone,” she says.

It’s not just pregnant women who need to heed this advice. Several studies have shown that men who keep their cell phones in their pocket may risk damaging their sperm, she says.

Jeff Stier, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, says that the new study is full of holes. “For starters, self-reporting of cell phone use makes it impossible to assign any meaning to the exposure,” he says.

“Different phones give off different exposures, and even those who were reported to be not exposed, probably had significant environmental exposure, rendering the study only slightly more than amusing,” he told WebMD.

Source

Babies' biological clocks dramatically affected by birth light cycle

The season in which babies are born can have a dramatic and persistent effect on how their biological clocks function.

That is the conclusion of a new study published online on Dec. 5 by the journal Nature Neuroscience. The experiment provides the first evidence for seasonal imprinting of biological clocks in mammals.

The imprinting effect, which was found in baby mice, may help explain the fact that people born in winter months have a higher risk of a number of neurological disorders including seasonal affective disorder (winter depression), bipolar depression and schizophrenia.

In the experiment, groups of mouse pups were raised from birth to weaning in artificial winter or summer light cycles. After they were weaned, they were maintained in either the same cycle or the opposite cycle for 28 days. Once they were mature, the mice were placed in constant darkness and their activity patterns were observed.

The winter-born mice showed a consistent slowing of their daily activity period, regardless of whether they had been maintained on a winter light cycle, or had been shifted to summer cycle after weaning. When the scientists examined the master biological clocks in the mouse brains, using a gene that makes the clock cells glow green when active, they found a similar pattern: slowing of the gene clocks in winter-born mice compared to those born on a summer light cycle.

In addition, the experiments found that the imprinting of clock gene activity near birth had dramatic effects on the reaction of the biological clock to changes in season later in life. The biological clocks and behavior of summer-born mice remain stable and aligned with the time of dusk while that of the winter-born mice varied widely when they were placed in a summer light cycle.

"The mice raised in the winter cycle show an exaggerated response to a change in season that is strikingly similar to that of human patients suffering from seasonal affective disorder," Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas McMahon commented.

Exactly when the imprinting occurs during the three-week period leading up to weaning and whether the effect is temporary or permanent are questions the scientists intend to address in future experiments.

"We know that the biological clock regulates mood in humans. If an imprinting mechanism similar to the one that we found in mice operates in humans, then it could not only have an effect on a number of behavioral disorders but also have a more general effect on personality," said McMahon.

In humans, studies conducted in the northern and southern hemispheres have confirmed that it's the season of winter – not the birth month – that leads to increased risk of schizophrenia.

There are many possible seasonal signals that could affect brain development, including exposure to flu virus.

For the study, the researchers took groups of  newborn pups and placed them in environments with controlled day/night cycles. One group was placed in a "summer" cycle with 16 hours of light and eight hours of dark; another group was placed in a "winter" cycle with eight hours of light and 16 hours of dark; and a third group was placed in an equinox cycle with 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. They were kept in these environments for three weeks until they were weaned.

"When they are born, the brains of mice are less developed than those of a human baby. As a result, their brains are still being wired during this period," McMahon said.

Once they were weaned, half of the summer-born mice were kept on the summer cycle and half were switched to the winter cycle for the following 28 days as they matured. The winter-born mice were given the same treatment. The equinox-born mice were split into three groups and put into summer, winter and equinox cycles.

After the mice matured, they were placed into an environment of continuous darkness. This eliminated the day/night cues that normally reset biological clocks and allowed the scientists to determine their biological clock's intrinsic cycles.

The scientists found a substantial difference between the summer-born and winter-born groups.
The summer-born mice behaved the same whether they had been kept on the summer cycle or switched to the winter cycle. They started running at the time of dusk (as determined by their former day/night cycle), continued for ten hours and then rested for 14 hours.

The behavior of the winter-born mice was much different. Those who had been kept on the winter light cycle through maturation showed basically the same pattern as their summer cousins: They became active at the time of dusk and continued for 10 hours before resting. However, those who had been switched to a summer cycle remained active for an extra hour and a half.

When they looked at what was happening in the brains of the different groups, they found a strikingly similar pattern.

In the summer-born mice, the activity of neurons peaked at the time of dusk and continued for 10 hours. When the winter-born mice were matured in the winter cycle, their neuronal activity peaked one hour after the time of dusk and continued for 10 hours. But, in the winter-born mice switched to a summer cycle, the master bioclock's activity peaked two hours before the time of dusk and continued for 12 hours.

When they looked at the equinox group, the scientists found variations that fell midway between the summer and winter groups. Those subjected to a summer cycle when they matured had biological clocks that peaked one hour before the time of dusk and the biological clocks of those subjected to a winter cycle peaked a half hour after the time of dusk. In both cases the duration of activity was 11 hours.

Source

Baby Born With Full Set of Teeth

Breast feeding can be uncomfortable, but one mother who found it particularly painful was amazed to discover her new baby already had two front teeth.

Patricia Caulfield, 25, from Liverpool, said she noticed her daughter Faye's pearly whites a day after her birth at Ormskirk hospital.

Ms Caulfield said: "When she was born, I noticed two white slits on her bottom gum and the nurses said they were teeth. The next morning, when I was feeding her, I felt a sharp pain and saw they had come through fully.  My midwife told me this is really rare. Children are sometimes born with buds but hardly ever full teeth."

Two-week-old Faye Armstrong has now grown another two molars at the back of her mouth.

Most babies don't develop their first tooth until they are around six months old, and it is usually a lower central incisor.

Ms Caulfield, who works in recruitment, is currently at home on maternity leave with her Faye, who was born three weeks early, and three-year-old Alfie.

Ms Caulfield's community midwife Joyce Davies, who works for Liverpool Women's Hospital, said: "While you are always told to check for signs of teeth, it is actually a very, very rare event to find two fully erupted teeth after so few days.You often find little beads in the gums but there is no doubt about it - these are two fully-formed teeth."
 
"This little baby certainly got all she wanted for Christmas - her two front teeth!"

Source

Epilepsy Drug Could Cause Birth Defects

According to a new study, European researchers have linked side effects of Tegretol, an epilepsy drug, to a risk of the serious birth defect spina bifida when the medication is taken by pregnant women.

The study, which was published online Friday by the British Medical Journal, looked at eight cohort studies of 2,680 pregnancies where the women were exposed to carbamazepine, which is marketed as Tegretol, Carbatrol, Epitol and Equetrol.

Overall, 3.3% of women who took the drug in the first trimester gave birth to children with birth defects. They determined that Tegretol side effects during pregnancy were associated with a 2.6 times risk of having a child with spina bifida than women who were not exposed to carbamazepine.

Spina bifida is a developmental birth malformation involving the spinal cord, where some vertebrae are not fully formed. The condition may allow portions of the spinal cord to protrude through the opening in the bones, leading to serious life-long injuries for the child

The use of valproate epilepsy drugs during pregnancy, such as Depakote, Depacon, Depakine and Stavzor, have also been associated with an increased risk of birth defects, including spina bifida, cleft palate, abnormal skull development, malformed limbs, holes in the heart and urinary tract problems.

Late last year, the FDA added more stringent warnings about the risk of birth defects from Depakote and other valproate-based anti-seizure drugs. The warnings came after the agency found that the risk of giving birth to a child with a neural tube defect was 1-in-20 for women who took valproate during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, compared with a risk of only 1-in-1500 for women not taking the epilepsy drug.

In the new British Medical Journal study, researchers found that spina bifida from Tegretol and other carbamazepine drugs was the only major congenital malformation that could be significantly associated with these epilepsy drugs.

In an accompanying editorial, Irena Nulman, associate professor of paediatrics at the University of Toronto, cautioned that the links to birth defects should be carefully weighed against the benefits Tegretol, Depakote and other epilepsy drugs provide.

“For many pregnant women, discontinuing antiseizure drugs is not an option,” Nulman wrote. “Women should plan their pregnancy, receive evidence based prenatal counseling, and be given the safest antiepileptic drug.”
Tegretol (carbamazepine) was first approved in the U.S. in 1974 as an anticonvulsant. It is approved for the treatment of epilepsy, trigeminal neuralgia and bipolar disorder.

Source

How Parents Create the Entrepreneur

Think your decision to own your own business is all yours?

Maybe not. New research finds that parents have a lot more to do with career choice than you might think.

While previous researchers have determined that a career inclination may be inherited genetically and others say the driving force is upbringing and the nurturing from parents, a new child-development theory bridges those two models.

The research indicates that the way a child turns out can be determined in large part by the day-to-day decisions made by the parents who guide that child's growth.

"This model helps to resolve the nature-nurture debate," said  psychologist George Holden at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who conducted the research.

Holden hypothesizes that parents guide their children's development in four complex and dynamic ways:

• Parents initiate trajectories, sometimes trying to steer their child in a preferred developmental path based on either the parents' preferences or their observations of the child's characteristics and abilities, such as enrolling their child in a class, exposing them to people and places, or taking a child to practices or lessons;
• Parents also sustain their child's progress along trajectories with encouragement and praise, by providing material assistance such as books, equipment or tutoring, and by allocating time to practice or participate in certain activities;
• Parents mediate trajectories, which influences how their child perceives and understands a trajectory, and help their child steer clear of negative trajectories by preparing the child to deal with potential problems;
• Finally, parents react to child-initiated trajectories.

Trajectories are useful images for thinking about career development because one can easily visualize concepts like "detours," "roadblocks" and "off-ramps," Holden says.

Detours, he says, are transitional events that can redirect a pathway, such as divorce. Roadblocks are events or behavior that shut down a potential trajectory, such as teen pregnancy, which can block an educational path. Off-ramps are exits from a positive trajectory, such as abusing drugs, getting bullied or joining a gang.
Holden says there are other ways parents influence a child's progress on a trajectory, such as through modeling desired behaviors, or modifying the speed of development by controlling the type and number of experiences.

Some of the ways in which children react to trajectories include accepting, negotiating, resisting or rejecting them, he says.

"Some factors that also can influence trajectories include the family's culture, their income and family resources, and the quality of the parent-child relationship," says Holden. "What this model of parenting helps to point out is that effective parenting involves guiding children in such a way as to ensure that they are developing along positive trajectories."

Source

Exposure to animals during pregnancy cuts dermatitis risk in kids

Swiss researchers have revealed that women who spend their pregnancy in the proximity of farm animals and cats have children with a reduced risk of developing atopic dermatitis in their first two years of life.

Atopic dermatitis, also known as atopic eczema, is a chronic and extremely painful inflammation of the skin that frequently occurs in early childhood, generally already in infancy.

Earlier research has indicated that allergies were less common in children who grew up on farms and whose mothers lived on farms during their pregnancy.

Exposure to farm animals and bacteria frequently found in farms as well as drinking milk from the dairy offered the immune system protection. However, proof of this protective effect in connection with atopic dermatitis had remained elusive.

Now, Roger Lauener, Caroline Roduit and their colleagues from the University of Zurich have analyzed how prenatal environmental factors and genetic mechanisms influence the development of atopic dermatitis during the first two years of life.

They examined over 1,000 children in rural areas of five European countries - Austria, Finland, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Of the 1,063 children, 508 were from families that lived on farms while 555 were not farm children.

The researchers identified two genes in these children that are of vital importance for innate immunity and were able to link the expression of these genes to a lower likelihood of a doctor diagnosis of an allergic condition.

The findings of the study are not only significant in the face of the frequency of the disease and the suffering it causes but also support the theory that gene-environment interaction with the developing immune system influences the development of atopic dermatitis in young children.

The study is published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. (ANI)

Source

Saving Umbilical Cords Saves Lives

Public education is critical to helping parents understand the value of cord blood stem cells. That was the message Dr. Frances Verter delivered in an op-ed she recently penned for The Baltimore Sun. Dr. Verter should know - she is the founder and executive director of the Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation and the website ParentsGuideCordBlood.org, which provides expectant parents with information about cord blood stem cells and cord blood banks.

Dr. Verter is also the parent of a child who passed away in 1997 from leukemia, a condition that can be treated with cord blood stem cells. As a result, “I have made it my life's mission to educate expectant parents about the value of these cells, and hopefully persuade them not to throw them away,” Dr. Verter explains in her editorial.

You can read the full text of Dr. Verter’s op-ed here.

Source

Baby names reveal more about parents than ever before

The names people choose to give their children communicate a wealth of social information - more so now than ever before.

A new analysis of name statistics suggests that the meaning conveyed by a baby's name - that is, what a name tells others about the parents' tastes and background - has ramped up significantly over the last 25 years as baby names have become more diverse and numerous.

"We're in the middle of a naming revolution," said Laura Wattenberg, author of the popular book "The Baby Name Wizard" (Three Rivers Press, 2005) and creator of the website BabyNameWizard.com. "Parents are putting a much higher premium on distinctiveness."

As Wattenberg points out, in the 1950s, the top 25 most common boy's names and the top 50 girl's names accounted for half of babies born. Today, however, those top names are given to fewer babies. In fact, you'd have to include the most popular 134 boy's names and the top 320 girl's names to cover half of all babies born every year.

"If you have 10 guesses to get somebody's name today there's almost no chance you'll get it," Wattenberg told LiveScience. "But 100 years ago, if you guessed the top 10 names you'd have a really good chance" of guessing correctly.

But with these changes in naming trends come social implications.
 
"The more diverse naming styles become, the more we are going to read into somebody's name," Wattenberg said. She analyzed baby name statistics from the U.S. Social Security Administration to calculate a measure called "Shannon entropy" from the field of information theory. This measure is used to describe the information contained in a message — in this case, how much is communicated by the choice of a name.

Names communicate so much, because they often embody parents' values and tastes, as well as dreams and ambitions for their child.

"Sociologists love names," Wattenberg said. "They're practically the only case of a choice with broad fashion patterns that there's no commercial influence on. There's no company out there spending millions to convince you Brayden is a perfect name for your son." (Studies have shown that movies, celebrities and other cultural trends do have an impact on the popularity of certain names.)

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, called Wattenberg's work an "interesting analysis" and said, "It looks solid to me."

Twenge, author of book "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" (Free Press, April 2009), said the shift toward unique names was part of a broader social shift toward individualism in many aspects of our lives.

"It is much more common now for people to say, 'I want my child to stand out,'" Twenge said. "Naming a kid used to be an easier decision. Now you have to strike a balance in finding a name that isn't too popular, and isn't too weird."

And the fact that everyone who meets a child will now be able to glean more information from his or her name just adds to the predicament.

That means that parents-to-be who obsess over the choice of what to name their bun in the oven are justified in devoting hours to the decision. As Wattenberg wrote, "They're not just obsessive, they're responding to a new reality. I can prove it."

So how did names evolve to favor uniqueness over popularity?

Certainly the Internet is part of it. The social networking and easy communication with people beyond one's geographical local sphere means more sources of influence surround parents when deciding on a name. And with the rise of online user names — often based on a person's real name — comes an added incentive for that name to be one that no one else has.

"The idea of your name as a unique signifier that separates you from everyone else — that's a new idea," Wattenberg said. "Names never had to be unique. But today your name is often the first way and sometimes the only way people know you."

While it used to be enough to have a name unique to your neighborhood, now many parents are deterred if it's a name more than a few people in the world share.

Yet Twenge stressed that the trend toward distinctive names started before the Internet became so important.
Statistics show the diversification of baby names began in the 1960s, at the same time that Americans started placing more emphasis on individuality and less on collectivity and fitting in.

Also, the advent of name statistics has undoubtedly shaped naming trends. The Social Security Administration has only recently made baby name data available. Before that, people had anecdotal reasons to think a given name was popular or scarce, but they couldn't be sure. Now every year the country's most popular names are ranked and released.

"It's had a huge effect," Wattenberg said of the data. "There's a kind of reverse competitiveness that nobody wants to be number one."

And as much as people strive for uniqueness, ultimately humans are social animals that still want to fit in.

"We all want to be different from each other, but our tastes are still as much alike as they ever were," Wattenberg said. "So the result is we have a thousand tiny variations on a theme. You get Kayden, Brayden, Hayden, Jayden."

Source

Common Heartburn Medicines Pose Little Risk For Birth Defects

Common heartburn medicine, known as proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), has shown no evidence of increasing birth defects when taken during pregnancy, a new Danish study explains.

While this large study found no data supporting the dangers of the medicine, researchers stress the importance of gathering additional information to determine just how safe it would be to take PPIs while pregnant.

For the study, more than 840,000 births were examined between January 1996 and September 2008. Research can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM.

Heartburn is a very common symptom during pregnancy, and many women turn to common medicines to help ease the pain.

The most popular medicines are omeprazole, esomeprazole, and lansoprazole.

Researchers analyzed prescription data in relation to birth defects. Women were analyzed in two groups: those who used PPIs for the entire first trimester, including 4 weeks prior, and those using PPIs for the entire first trimester.

Results from the study showed 2.6 percent of more than 840,000 babies to have birth defects, and 3.4 percent of babies from mothers who used PPIs four weeks prior to conception had a major defect compared to only 2.6 percent of the babies from the other group.

Researchers conclude the usage of proton-pump inhibitors did not appear to increase the risk of birth defects.

Source

U.S. cautious on breast milk sharing as trend grows

U.S. health officials are cautioning new parents about sharing breast milk as a growing number of women are using social networking and other websites to share their milk instead of turning to infant formula.

Health experts have long promoted breast-feeding as the "perfect food" to provide babies with needed nutrients as well as ward off illness, but the Food and Drug Administration is worried about the practice.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency urged parents not to casually use breast milk from other, unscreened mothers because of the risk of disease or contamination from bacteria, drugs or chemicals.

"FDA recommends against feeding your baby breast milk acquired directly from individuals or through the Internet," the agency wrote. Instead, parents should talk to their doctors and use breast milk from special human milk banks, it said.

The move comes ahead of a public FDA meeting on Monday to discuss breast milk donations and banking. The agency is poised to release documents related to the meeting on Thursday.

It also follows some concern in recent years with the $2.8 billion infant formula market that has seen controversy over chemicals in can linings as well as various recalls.

A small network of self-regulated breast milk banks offer screened milk. But experts say they simply do not have enough milk to serve other mothers unable to breast-feed their babies.

Some women have turned to other women. Such web-based exchanges have spiked in recent weeks with the growth of Eats on Feets, a new global exchange that connects women who want to donate milk with women who need it.

Emma Kwasnica, one of two women who helped launch the group globally, said the warning was misguided. "It won't stop us mothers. ... They can't possibly regulate what women do with their bodies and their milk," she said.

Pauline Sakamoto, past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, said with just 10 banks nationwide, her nonprofit group understands the limits of banked milk, which can cost $3 to $5 an ounce (30 grams).

FDA's meeting could help highlight the need to expand insurance coverage as well as the number of actual banks, which are subsidized in most other countries, she said.

Larry Grummer-Strawn, a top nutrition expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said most banks barely have enough milk to serve very low weight babies such as preemies.

"There's not enough supply right now, so they're focused on where there's the most need," he said.
Eats on Feets' Kwasnica said those who need milk can't wait for better banks and that other women who pump too much can help: "Breast milk is not a scarce commodity. It's a free-flowing resource, and we are dumping it down the drain."

Source

Study shows pregnant mother's diet impacts infant's sense of smell

A major new study shows that a pregnant mother's diet not only sensitizes the fetus to those smells and flavors, but physically changes the brain directly impacting what the infant eats and drinks in the future.

"This highlights the importance of eating a healthy diet and refraining from drinking alcohol during pregnancy and nursing," said Josephine Todrank, PhD, who conducted the two-year study while a visiting scientist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "If the mother drinks alcohol, her child may be more attracted to alcohol because the developing fetus "expects" that whatever comes from the mother must be safe. If she eats healthy food, the child will prefer healthy food."

Researchers studying mice found that the pups' sense of smell is changed by what their mothers eat, teaching them to like the flavors in her diet. At the same time, they found significant changes in the structure of the brain's olfactory glomeruli, which processes smells, because odors in the amniotic fluid affect how this system develops.

"This is the first study to address the changes in the brain that occur upon steady exposure to flavors in utero and early in postnatal life when the newborn is receiving milk from the mother," said Diego Restrepo, PhD, co-director of the Center for NeuroScience at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and sponsor of the study. "During these periods the pup is exposed to flavors found in the food the mom is eating."
The research, he said, could have important public health implications.

"Many diseases plaguing society involve excess consumption or avoidance of certain kinds of foods," said Restrepo, a professor of cell and developmental biology. "Understanding the factors that determine choice and ingestion, particularly the early factors, is important in designing strategies to enhance the health of the infant, child, and adult."

In her study, Todrank, now a research fellow with collaborator Giora Heth, PhD, at the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa, Israel, fed one group of pregnant and nursing mice a bland diet and another a flavored diet. At weaning age, the pups from mothers on the flavored diet had significantly larger glomeruli than those on the bland diet. They also preferred the same flavor their mother ate, while the other pups had no preference.

"Exposure to odor or flavor in the womb elicits the preference but also shapes the brain development," said Todrank, whose work was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and was published Dec. 1, 2010 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a major biological research journal.

"From the fetus' point of view, whatever is in the womb is considered "good". If your mother ate it and survived to give birth to you then it was probably safe," she said. "This is a good strategy for a mouse that is foraging for food. It treats those same foods as safe."

Due to the similarities in mammalian development, she said, there is no reason to think that experiments would produce different results in humans.

"What an expectant mother chooses to eat and drink has long-term effects – for better or worse – on her child's sensory anatomy as well his or her odor memory and food preferences in the future," Todrank said. "It is not yet clear how long these changes and preferences last, but we are currently investigating that question."

Source

Due Maternity Goes Live With "Big Changes for Small Change"

RetailROI, the Retail Orphan Initiative, today announced Due Maternity has gone live with the yearlong "Big Changes for Small Change" campaign, allowing consumers to round up the dollar amount of their purchase as a donation to RetailROI when checking out.

Due Maternity is the first retailer to implement the program.

"Due Maternity is committed to the mission of RetailROI, and we have the ideal customer base to offer them our support," said Albert DiPadova, vice president, Due Maternity. "We understand how busy and chaotic life can be for new moms and the 'Big Changes for Small Change' program is an easy way for moms to continue giving back and making a difference in the lives of others without losing precious moments with their own child."

"Through the generous efforts of retailers such as Due Maternity, shoppers can support RetailROI in helping the millions of orphaned and vulnerable children around the world," said Greg Buzek, donor trustee for the Retail Orphan Initiative. "Every little bit helps, and with continued support from the retail community, RetailROI can continue giving to the deserving organizations who are on the frontlines caring for these children."

Source

How Much Does Birth Order Shape Our Lives?

There are lots of expectations and assumptions about how birth order may shape our adult lives, and many of them go back ages. Centuries ago, the oldest son had huge incentives to stay on track and live up to family expectations - that's because, by tradition, he was set to inherit almost everything.

"Historically the practice of primogeniture was very common in Europe," says Frank Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. "So firstborns had every reason to preserve the status quo and be on good terms with their parents."

Now you may think any "first born" effect would have completely disappeared in modern times. But not so, say experts who study birth order. Researchers first examined the status of firstborns among Washington power brokers in 1972.

"I expected that there would be a disproportionately high number of firstborns among members of Congress" says psychologist Richard Zweigenhaft of Guilford College. "And that's exactly what I found."

Out of 121 representatives and senators included in his sample, Zweigenhaft found that 51 were firstborns, 39 were middle children, and 31 were youngest children. It wasn't a huge overrepresentation of firstborns, but the difference, he says, is too significant to ignore.

Several surveys and studies conducted throughout the years have found that firstborns do edge out later-borns in lots of high-achieving professions, from corporate CEOs to college professors to U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices. There's even evidence that firstborn children are about 3 IQ points smarter than their second-born siblings.

So what nudges oldest children to be conscientious, striving achievers? One factor is that firstborns tend to get undivided parental resources, explains Sulloway.

"When the second [child] comes along, the oldest still gets half of all that [attention], so younger siblings never have a chance to catch up," he says.

It's not that mothers and fathers intend to parent differently — oftentimes it just works out that way. Partly it's the inexperience that makes some first-time parents go overboard: signing children up for every lesson and activity imaginable, for example.

Experts say it's never entirely predictable how birth order may influence our personalities, behaviors or family dynamics — there are plenty of firstborns who don't fit the mold.

"The one thing you can say about birth order is that it's not absolutely deterministic of how people's lives turn out," says Sulloway.

Experts say it's just one small piece of the puzzle.

"I'm not sure I would say that birth order plays a strong role in who we become," Zweigenhaft says. "Birth order contributes to who we become."

After all, we're all amalgams of many childhood influences, from teachers and peers to random life events, including turns of good luck and bad.

Source