While athletes repeat the mantra, “no pain, no gain”, to themselves at the gym, when it comes to pregnancy, stress is a bad thing. Our Christian heritage leads us to protect pregnant women from a variety of harms. Science offers another reason to do so with this research out of the Massachusetts General Hospital. They found that an increasing number of stressors during the mother’s pregnancy led to increasing scores on the Child Behavior Checklist. This indicated more problems with attention, anxiety or depression.
The research looked at several different prenatal events including complications of pregnancy or delivery, maternal use of chemicals such as alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, and unplanned pregnancies. These factors were connected in smaller prior studies, but this provided a cumulative risk evaluation. As the number of these factors increased for a given child, their risk of psychiatric symptoms increased from 7% for 1 factor to 29% chance with more than 3 factors.
While I appreciate these studies, from a Biblical standpoint, we want to protect mothers and their unborn children regardless. However, this adds support to the fact that there are real and life-long consequences to these children. A functional medicine doctor like myself would add a few other things like avoiding toxins and inflammatory foods for starters. I would also avoid administering untested medical therapies to pregnant moms. Helping patient live healthier more abundant lives begins in the womb.
Original Article:
Joshua L. Roffman, Eren D. Sipahi, Kevin F. Dowling, Dylan E. Hughes, Casey E. Hopkinson, Hang Lee, Hamdi Eryilmaz, Lee S. Cohen, Jodi Gilman, Alysa E. Doyle, Erin C. Dunn. Association of adverse prenatal exposure burden with child psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (4): e0250235 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250235
Thanks to Science Daily:
Massachusetts General Hospital. “Childhood psychiatric symptom risk strongly linked to adverse exposures during gestation.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2021. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210428140901.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.