Saturday, October 23, 2010

Seniors- Time magazie article

Read the article "How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life"

Answer the following questions...

1. Summarize what the article says about the origins of heart disease.
2. What is the prenatal impact on obesity?
3. What does the article state about the prenatal influence for developing diabetes?
4. Summarize findings about the impact of air pollution.
5. How might the prenatal environment be linked to mental health? Explain.

All questions should be answered in complete sentences, and each question should contain at lest 5-6 sentences to fully answer the question.

Value: 10 points

Due: Wednesday, Oct 27

70 comments:

Justine R said...

1. England and Whales were the two poorest countries at the time, and they both had the highest percentage of heart disease. A British physician, David Barker, investigated and said there was a connection to adult health and their birth weight. He realized that there was a link between low birth weight babies, usually because of poor prenatal nutrition, and heart disease in an older age.
2. One study shows that women who gain a lot of weight during pregnancy, their children are more likely to become over weight. Women who get an anti-obese surgery, their children are 52% less likely to become obese after their mother has had the surgery.
3. Many children with moms who have diabetes have a chance of getting it while in the womb. Eating healthy and exercising will help keep your diabetes down while pregnant.
4. Traffic related air pollution can cause premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations for the baby. One of Frederica Perera's studies was in 1998, when 500 pregnant women spread across Manhattan and the Bronx wearing black backpacks, which they wore two days. In each backpack was an air monitor which measured the PAH, a pollution that comes from vehicles and is also present in the fumes from cigarettes. After their babies were born, 40% had DNA damage from PAH that can increase cancer risk. These kids were twice as likely at age 3, to score lower on an assessment that says your performance in school; at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests than other children not affected.
5. Women suffering from hunger have a more likely chance for their baby to develop schizophrenia. In the 20th century, people from a certain region were starving during a famine. Babies born to women starving from the famine were more likely to develop schizophrenia then others who weren’t affected.

Jimmy Fowler said...

1. The origin of heart disease, as explained from the article, starts in the nutrition of the fetus. Fetuses that had low birth weights were found to have a greater chance of heart disease later in life. The low birth weight is correlated to the nutrition provided to the fetus in the womb. Since the fetus would give whatever nutrients it had to the brain, the most important organ, other organs like the heart got less nutrition than desired. Since the heart did not get the right nutrition as a fetus, it suffered when the person got older.

2. Obesity is related to the amount of weight gain the mother had during pregnancy. It was also related to the mother’s weight before pregnancy. If the mother was overweight before pregnancy then the chances for the child to be obese increases dramatically. This was tested on women who were overweight before pregnancy and the child of that pregnancy, and the child of another pregnancy from the same mother after she had a surgery to reduce her weight. It showed that the children of the first pregnancy, who has the same genetics and environment from the second child, had a greater chance of being obese. The metabolisms of the children from the second birth seemed to be normal. The prenatal environment changed the genes.

3. During gestation, the high blood sugar levels of diabetic women changed the fetus’ metabolism. So it was inferred that if the mother had high sugar levels during pregnancy, then the baby had a greater chance of conceiving diabetes as an adult. This news brought hope to the Native American community because diabetes runs ramped. So, instead of finding a fix for the people who already have diabetes, the next generations’ future is brighter. The community feels less hopeless now because dieting was just not doing the trick.

4. Pollution during the gestation of the baby found its way into the umbilical cord attached to the baby. There was a study done on women who lived in an urban environment and measured the levels of pollutants found in the umbilical cord. It was found out that pollution was connected to premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations in the fetus. And of the fetuses, 40% had DNA damage. Into early childhood the fetuses exposed to pollution had learned disabilities and low IQ.

5. The stress levels of women during pregnancy may cause mental disorders in their children as adults. The prenatal environment affects the temperament and intelligence as adults. Women who were stressed during pregnancy or lived through a dramatic event, like war, had higher chance of getting children with schizophrenia. Then a study done pregnant women showed that stress only affected the fetus if the mother was depressed. The stress levels molded the development of the fetuses all through life.

RebeccaF said...

British physician; David Barker studied the poorest regions of England and Wales that had the highest rates of heart disease. He found that small birth size was due to poor prenatal nutrition, and this was linked to heart disease in middle age. The low birth weight is because of inadequate food supply, therefore diverting essential nutrients to the brain. Other vital organs such as the heart were malnourished. This resulted in a weaker heart, having a long term effect of heart disease later in life.

Physical Health, intelligence, temperament, and sanity can all be influenced by intrauterine conditions. Mothers with extreme stress and/or starvation put their unborn children at a higher risk for having schizophrenia. Catherine Monk: Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University; stated that a mother's mental state could shape a child's psyche. Her moods effect the child's development. The study Monk conducted consisted of measuring heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and nervous system arousal. This was recorded as well as the movements and heart rate of the fetus. The outcome, was that only the fetuses show disturbed-ness when the mother was depressed or anxious. This showed that fetuses are sensitive to stress.Their nervous systems are being shaped by their mother's emotional status. This in conjunction with the woman's heart rate, blood pressure and other levels of stress hormones. Lastly, but not least, being raised with a parent with a mental illness can increase the risk in the offspring having that same illness.

Studies at Harvard Medical School shows that obesity can be influenced from as early as inside the womb, as well as before by the mother. If a woman, during pregnancy, excessively gains weight comparatively to average or moderate weight gain the fetus/child will have a higher risk for being obese by age three. Depending on the severity of weight gain by the mother during pregnancy, the child's obesity may persist into adolescence. This does not include eating habits and genetic predisposition, that has an equal to more important role in obesity. Although, if the mother had weight reduction surgery, and was at a healthy weight previous to conception, the fetus had a 52% chance of not being obese. This is compared to their siblings who were born of the mother when she was overweight. This is due to the difference in the intrauterine environments. If a child is born with low birth weight, and a healthy mother, they are three times less likely to become obese.

The study for prenatal influences for developing diseases were preformed with Pima Indians of the Gila River Reservation in Arizona. They had the highest rate of type two diabetes in the world. This could be due partially to a genetic component, as well as prenatal experience (mother is diabetic). The influence on the fetus is high blood sugar from the mother, which disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus. High blood sugar predisposes the unborn child to diabetes and obesity. Predisposition of diseases from mother to fetus may be a factor in an alarming rise of disease nationally. Although it may be a breakthrough with prevention as well. With knowing what causes the diseases, we can attack and prevent future occurrences.

Frederica Perera, director of The Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University,studied the the impact of air pollution on unborn fetuses. In adults, air pollution is thought to be a possible cause of cancer. When the umbilical- cord blood, and placental tissue were tested for toxins and pollutants (PAH), they were already contaminated. When exposed to traffic related air pollution during pregnancy, it can have diverse outcomes. This may include premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. The study showed subtle DNA damage from PAH (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). This can increase the fetus' risk for cancer, delay cognitive processes and lower the IQ.

mmobley said...

1.In the article they mention that the origins of heart disease have to do mainly with low birth weight. In Whales, where heart disease is the highest, there was a strong correlation between heart disease and low birth weight concluded British physician David Barker. He learned that the low birth weight was a result of poor prenatal care. He also discovered that due to poor prenatal care, the fetus would take nutrients from other parts of the body and give it to the brain, something that turns into heart disease later on in life.

2.The prenatal impact on obesity is very great. First, the more weight the mother gains during the pregnancy, the more likely the child will be overweight. Also, if a mother has ant obesity surgery, children born before the surgery are more likely to be overweight than children born after the surgery. OF course there are always hereditary and genetic factors that need to be taken into consideration.

3.The article states that prenatal influence for a baby developing diabetes has to done with genetics and hereditary but also when an expecting mother has high blood sugar, it disrupts the developing fetus, which can lead to both diabetes and obesity. Exposure to diabetes while in the utero is a great percentage for the development of diabetes.

4.When it comes to air pollution, especially traffic related, air pollution could lead to low birth weight, premature delivery and heart malfunctions. PAH’s are also a big cause. When a group of pregnant women carried backpacks around for a day, it was found that they had been exposed to PAH. In result, their children were born with little DNA damage as well as an increase in cancer. Their children had lower IQ’s and struggled more on material.

5.The prenatal environment might be related to mental health through stress as well as temperament. Their stress is all over the place and their moods change often. Their nervous system is shaped based on to the mother’s mood. Heart rates also have to do with a mother’s temperament.

Alex Leeds said...

1. The poorest regions of Wales and England were the ones with the highest rates of heart disease. David Baker noticed that there was a link between adult health and their birth weight. He figured out that if the person had a small birth size that it was an indication of poor prenatal nutrition and also a heart disease in their middle age. Baker concluded that the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organs, the brain, while skimping on the other parts of its body, which later this will result in a weakened heart.
2. After the mothers had the antiobesity surgery, the later-born children inherited alike genes to their older siblings but they experienced different intrauterine environments. The first study that was done showed that children gestated by women post surgery were 52% less likely to become obese then siblings born to the same mother when she was still heavy. A second study that was done found that children born after the mothers weight loss had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become obese than their older brother and sisters. Their metabolism was made normal through their prenatal experience, a process known as epigenetic modification. It may be that the intrauterine environment is more important than genes.
3. The prenatal influence of diabetes begins in the womb. The pregnant diabetic woman’s high blood sugar affects the developing fetus and it is predisposing it to diabetes. This article stated that woman with diabetes would try diet and exercising for the hope that the baby would have a healthier life. These simple changes could reduce the offspring risk of being diabetic.
4. Air pollution has an impact on the babies still in the womb. Frederica Perera began sampling the umbilical cord blood and placental tissue and the test came back with “evidence of contamination”. A test was done in NY and it showed that 100% of the women were exposes to PAHs during their pregnancies. 40% of the infants showed subtle DNA damage from the PAHs. With this being said, these kids are twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3 and scoring lower on assessment and have lower IQs by age 5.
5. The prenatal development might be linked to mental health because scientists are figuring out if the intrauterine conditions influence our mental health and things such as intelligence, temperament, and sanity. For example a study showed that women going through starvation or stress give birth to children who are a higher risk of schizophrenia. It has been stated that a women’s mental state can shape her offspring. Researchers’ think that a mother’s mood can affect the babies’ development and what it is going to be like

Alyssa Kieffer said...

1. Physician David Barker conducted a study on the adult health of 15,000 individuals. He found that the poorest regions of England and Wales had the highest rate of heart disease. He also found a link between small birth size and middle-aged heart disease. He concluded that when not getting enough nutrition, the fetus diverts the majority of the nutrition it recieves to its most important organ - the brain - while skimping on other organs.
2. Harvard Medical School conducted two studies on the prenatal effects on obesity. One study found that the more weight a woman gains during pregnancy, the higher the risk was that her child would be overweight by the time they are 3 years old. The second study compared teenagers of women who had moderate weight gain and women who had extreme weight gain. The teens of those women who had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese.
3. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar may disrupt the metabolism of the fetus. This may give them a predisposition to both diabetes and obesity. Exposure to diabetes in the womb accounts for the majority of type 2 diabetes. Daniel Benyshek said that, "Young women in particular are enthusiastic about the idea of intervening in pregnancy to break the cycle of diabetes. They say, 'I tried dieting, I tried exercising, and I couldn't keep it up. But I could do it for nine months if it meant that my baby would have a better chance at a healthy life.'" Women are willing to change their ways if it means lessening their child's chance for diabetes.
4. Fredrica Perera made it her focus to learn how air pollution affects children in the womb. She found that air pollution can have several different impacts on a child in the womb including premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. After a study using air monitors in backpacks, she found that 100% of the pregnant subjects had been exposed to PAH, a type of pollution. When their babies were born, analyses of their umbilical blood showed that 40% had traces of PAH that had caused subtle DNA damage. They are twice as likely to be cognitively delayed by age 3.
5. Women subjected to starvation and extreme stress are more likely to give birth to children with predispositions for schizophrenia. Individuals born to women who were suffering in the famine in China were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia. A study of the health records of 88,000 people born in Jerusalem betwen 1964 and 1976 found that women who were in their second month of pregancy at the time of the Arab-Israeli War were signifigantly more likely to develop schizophria as young adults.

DDeMasi said...

1. The origin of heart disease according to David Barker, a British physician, heart disease can be linked to low birth weight. Low birth weight is usually a sign of poor prenatal nutrition and premature births. Also, the use of teratogens may cause low birth weight. When the fetus doesn't get enough nutrition it makes sure it sends the nutrients to it's most important organ, the brain. Sending all of the nutrients to the brain skimps on other organs, resulting in a weakened heart.

2. Some studies showed that the greater the pregnant mother's weight gain the more likely their child would become overweight by the age of three. Children could also share eating habits or a genetic predisposition to obesity with their mothers. One study showed that first borns to obese women were more likely to be obese themselves than a child born after the mothers antiobesity surgery. However, another study
published in 2009, found that children born after their mothers lost weight had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become severely obese than their siblings.The intrauterine environment may be even more important than genes or shared eating habits in passing on a propensity for obesity.This means that if we help women keep a healthy body weight before and during pregancy we may be able to stop obesity before it starts.

3.It has always been thought that the Pima Indians were genetically predisposed to the highest type of diabetes. However, new research studying a large group of Pima Indians since 1965 points to prenatnal experience evidence. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity.Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero is responsible for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years,and it may be a factor of diabetes rising nationally. But it also opens a door to a solution. "If we could intensively control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy," Dabelea says, "we could really bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes."

4.The effects of air pollution on the fetus was tested by Perera, the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University. She decided she would use babies right out of the womb as her control and when she tested the umbilical cord it had already been contaminated.She has tied exposure to premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. When more than five hundred pregnant women monitored how many of them were being exposed to pollution everyday 100% was the result. When the babies' cord blood was tested 40% had subtle DNA damage by the PAHs.

5.Prenatal health can be linked to mental health because individuals born to women suffering from the famine were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those gestated at other times. Also, a study of the health records of more than 88,000 people born in Jerusalem between 1964 and 1976 found that the offspring of women who were in their second month of pregnancy in June 1967 — the time of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War — were significantly more likely to develop schizophrenia as young adults.Catherine Monk believes that a pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche.Pregnant women who were depressed or anxious and pregnant women with normal moods were hooked up to devices that measure their respiration, heart rate, blood pressure and nervous-system arousal, as well as the movements and heart rate of their fetuses, and then subjected to challenging mental exercises. All of these women showed physiological signs of stress in response to the tests, but only the fetuses of depressed or anxious women displayed disturbances of their own.

CelestaSmith said...

1)Professor David Barker studied the correlation between prenatal heath and heart disease when the baby is an adult. He came to realize that if the baby is malnourished in the womb than it will not have enough nutrients to develop all the organs properly. When the fetus is not getting enough nutrients, the brain, when forming, takes all the needed nutrients. This leaves organs like the heart under developed and weak. The low nutrition left the baby with low birth weight and weak organs.
2)When a mother was obesity when pregnant or gained too much weight and didn’t keep a healthy diet the child was more likely to have a weight problem by the age of three. The study went further though, If the mother had a child when she was obese and then had a anti obesity surgery and then had another child, the second child was less at risk to obesity then the first. There for mother has a great impact on the weight and the baby’s future weight.
3)There is new research that fallowed the Pima Indians that explains the different prenatal experience. A diabetic woman's high blood sugar seems to disrupt the developing metabolism of the baby in the womb and leading to diabetes and obesity. So if scientists could figure out how to control a woman’s blood pressure it may be able to bring down the percent of diabetes. When the Pima women found out about this discovery they were more hopeful about their babyies’ futures.
4)Frederica Perera investigated air pollution on fetuses. She first thought that it would not have that much effect on them until she examined the umbilical cords. She found that they were already contaminated by the air pollution. To future the investigations she tested to see how much pollution (PAH) pregnant women in New York City were exposed to. She came up with a shocking number of 100%. In the babies umbilical cord there was 40% of PAH, which was causing DNA damaging and higher risks for cancer. High levels of PAHs in babies were found to be more than two times as likely to be the cause of cognitively delay at age 3, “scoring lower on an assessment that predicts performance in school; at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests than children who received less exposure to PAHs in the womb.”
5)Everyone is told when there are pregnant to lower their stress level. Could these women be so stressed that they can cause mental health problems for their babies? Schizophrenia is a very complex disorder that may be caused by stress in the prenatal environment. Studies have shown that women that were pregnant during a famine or war were more likely to have a child develop Schizophrenia.

Meghan S. said...

1. The article says that the origin of heart disease was poor prenatal nutrition. Most of the nutrients that a mother will eat will go directly to a fetus’s brain, skipping many other important organs such as the heart. This will later lead into problems later in life because of this.
2. The prenatal impact from obesity is the more weight gain a mother has from her pregnancy, the more likely it is that her child will be overweight by the time they are three years old. One study showed a child who was born before their mother had a surgery to lose weight and their sibling who was born after the surgery when the mother was not obese. Both siblings had the same genes but different intrauterine environments. Studies proved that children are less likely to be obese if their mother isn’t during pregnancy.
3. In the article the prenatal influence for developing diabetes states that diabetes does have a significant genetic component. A pregnant mother with diabetes and high blood sugar seemed to disrupt the developing metabolism of the growing fetus, there for predisposing it to obesity and diabetes. Another study showed that maternal diabetes in the uterus is the reason why there was a greater increase of diabetic children in this city.
4. This article show that pregnant mother’s exposed to air pollution is a great factor for their babies and having a premature delivery, low birth weight, or heart malformations. One study showed that 100% of women are exposed to air pollution. Out of these women, 40% of babies had damage of their DNA which has been linked to an increase cancer risk.
5. The prenatal environment is be linked to mental health because once study showed that babies who’s mother’s suffered from a severe famine were more likely to develop a mental health disease like schizophrenia. Mother’s mood can affect the child’s development. A test showed that all women showed signs of stress but those fetus’s of depressed or anxious women showed disturbances of their own. Fetuses are more sensitive to stress. A women’s emotional state can influence her child of developing a mental disease.

macleary (: said...

1.The article suggests that heart disease is originally caused by the prenatal effects. Children in utero are affected by the things the mother does on a daily basis. The air they breathe, food they eat, things they drink, and every normal day thing. The article also states that low birth weight and heart disease are linked and have an effect on each other. Mothers should be aware of their surrounding because the air could be contaminated causing future heart disease in the fetus.
2.Mothers who are obese pass along the trait to their children genetically, but their children are not always going to become obese. Mothers who have had a weight loss surgery and removed the excess carbohydrates and fats from their bodies have shown to have healthier babies. Other mothers who are obese and pregnant tend to have children who grow up to be obese as well. Also, women should maintain a healthy balanced diet during and after pregnancy to impact their child’s diet as it grows.
3.Diabetes in utero accounts for most of those with Type 2 diabetes but this can be helped in some ways. Pregnant women should consistently watch their blood sugar during pregnancy to lessen the chances of diabetic children. Also, women who control their diet and exercise decrease the risks of passing diabetes onto their offspring. Young women strongly believe that, even though they may not be able to maintain their diet and exercise, they would do it for their child.
4.The air pollution in different areas varies creating different environments for pregnant women. Lower economical places in New York City used to be one of the worst places for pregnant women. Tests were done to study the air in Bronx and Manhattan, where women would carry black backpacks with air monitors in them testing the air. Studies shows 100% of women inhaled PAH’s during pregnancy in those areas. Scientists have been working on decreasing the levels of pollutions by creating cleaner technologies for school buses and putting restrictions on diesel cars.
5.Mental health may be affected through the prenatal environment from in multiple ways. Women who are put under too much stress affect the mental health of the fetus. Also those women, who tend to starve themselves, put the risk of schizophrenia and other mental diseases onto the fetus. The emotional state of pregnant women have a huge affect on the fetus because it predisposes the fetus to the mental illnesses the mother is going through, including anxiety and depression.

mgilleylen said...

1. The article says that heart disease could be because of poor nutrients that the fetus received in the womb. Studies showed that low birth weight and cardiovascular disease had a correlation. The origins of heart disease can definitely trace back to the fetus and how the mother nourished herself during pregnancy.
2. The pregnant woman's gained weight during pregnancy is something that can have an impact on her child and their weight. Women that had obesity surgery before becoming pregnant proved to have a positive impact on the child and they were less obese than their siblings who were born before the mother had the surgery. It's not to say that genetics play a role as well because DNA has a say in the obesity of the child as well.
3.While a woman is pregnant, her blood sugar affects the metabolism of the baby which an allow for diabetes. The high blood sugar in diabetic women need to be controlled to try to stop it from your child developing it later in life. This could break the cycle of diabetes.
4. People thought that a baby would not be exposed to any bad air but placenta testings proved that they too were receiving contaminated air. Pollution can lead to premature births, heart problems and low birth weights. Babies born in polluted areas had slight DNA changes. Those exposed to high amounts of pollution had changes in learning ability and cognitive skills.
5. Women who were stressed during pregnancy could have a child with a higher risk for schizophrenia. Severe starvation also could cause poor mental health. Moods can also have an effect on the fetus. The fetus's nervous systems are being shaped by the mother's emotional and mental state.

Brooke Nichols said...

1. There was a british physican named David Baker who noticed, two decades ago, that the poorest parts of England and Wales had the highest rate of heart disease. When he investigated this he found a link between small birth size and heart disease in middle age. A fetus who is poorly nutritioned will give its nutrients to the most important organ, the brain. The other organs won't get what they need which can lead to haert disease. It is known as the Baker hypothesis.
2. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have conducted some studies on prenatal enviroment affect on obesity. The more weight a woman gains duroing pregnancy the higher the risk fo her child to become obese. They can tell by the age of three if they will be overweight or not. Women who had an antiobesity surgery before becomig pregnant made their children 52% less likely to be obese. Another study was done that showed women who lost weight made their children 3 times less likely to be obese.
3. An influence on developing diabetes is prenatal experience. The womans high blood sugar from diabetes can disrupt metabolism of the fetus. This predisposes their children to diabetes. Exposure to diabetes like this is why there is an increase in type 2 diabetes. As long as the woman can control her blood sugar her child is less likely to become diabetic.
4. Research on traffic-related pollution has shown that it can cause premature birth, low birth weight, and neart malformation. There was a study done with 500 women in NYC who wore black backpacks containing an air monitor for two days. It would measure PAHs and polycylic aromaticc hydrocarbons. This study revealed 100% of women are exposed to air pollution. Samples from the children showed that 40% had some kind of DNA damage becasue of it.
5. Prenatal enviroment can affect childs mental health. This menatl health would be our intelligence, temperment, and sanity. Pregnant wonmen who are subjected to extreme stress or starvation have children with higher risk of schizophrenia. They have also found that the mothers mental state can affect her childs psyche. Fetuses are more sensitive to stress if their mothers are stressed during pregnancy.

ashley zeroka said...

Ashley Zeroka
Child Psychology
October 27, 2010
Miss Albanese


1. The article believes that the origins of heart disease begin during gestation. There is a correlation between low birth weight and heart disease. David Barker did a study two decades ago with 15,000 individuals in regions of Wales and England. He saw that low birth weight, which was caused by poor prenatal nutrition, was also in effect with heart disease. The fetus would divert nutrients to the brain because it is the most important organ. Therefore, all of the organs are skimped on, so things like the heart get less nutrition and are weakened.

2. If a mother is obese during her pregnancy, the child has a high chance of being obese. The more weight the woman gains during pregnancy increases the risk that her child will be overweight by the age of three. Studies have shown that siblings experience different intrauterine environments. If child one is a fetus when a mother is obese and child two is a fetus after the mother has lost weight, child two will be three times less likely to be severely obese. The intrauterine environment has a greater impact than genes or shared eating habits on a fetus. Therefore, women should maintain a healthy weight before and during pregnancy.

3. The article states that women who have high blood sugar and diabetes lead to children developing diabetes. Exposure to diabetes in utero accounts for most of the accounts of diabetes. During pregnancy, the high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus. This disposes fetuses to diabetes. During pregnancy, if blood sugar can be intensively controlled, the number of children who develop diabetes will greatly decrease. The main cause is the high blood sugar in women, and if that can be maintained, then the risk of getting diabetes can be decreased.

4. Air pollution has a shocking impact on pregnancies. The impacts include premature delivery, low birth weight, and hearth malformations. A study was done to see if pregnant women were exposed to a certain type of pollutant. The results revealed that they were exposed 100% to it. After the baby was born, they took blood samples to see if the fetus had been exposed. 40% of the infants had subtle damage from the pollutant. People exposed prenatally were more than twice as likely to develop cancer and had lower performances in school. This included scores on assessments and IQ tests and also cognitive ability. Air pollution has shown to effect learning skills, and has effects on weight, cancer, and heart malformations.

5. Research indicates that women’s moods can affect the fetus after child birth. Intrauterine environment may be a third pathway by which mental illnesses are passed down. The fetuses are very sensitive to all of the mother’s actions and stresses. A fetus’s nervous system is shaped by their mother’s emotional health. If a mother is always stressed, then the child will have those disturbances too. In a study, evidence indicates that women who were starved or extremely stress had higher risk of giving birth to children who would develop schizophrenia. In China, those children born to women suffering from the famine were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia. In Jerusalem, the offspring of women who witnessed the Six-Day War were highly more likely to develop schizophrenia as young adults. How a mother acts and feels, impacts her fetus. Their nervous systems and mental activities are beginning to develop in there, and the greatest impact is from the mother.

Nick Pompetti said...

1) The Time article talks about how they have been doing recent studies on common health diseases and how they may be able to be prevented. David Barker found out in his studies that showed poor regions throughout the world had the highest rates of heart disease. He realized that small birth size and heart disease was a result from a lack of prenatal nutrition. So because the fetus takes the needed nutrients to keep the brain alive, the other parts of the body do not get sufficient nutrients to grow properly.
2) The prenatal impact on obesity is that they found that the greater the weight is that the mother gains, the higher the chance of the baby being overweight at a young age. Another prenatal impact is that babies born after a mom has an antiobesity surgery the child still has the same not healthy eating habits as his older siblings. Even though he had a different intrauterine environment. But a more recent study showed that a baby born to a mother that lost weight and changed her eating habits had lower birth weights.
3) What the article says about prenatal diabetes is that it may be able to be prevented if we could control the diabetic woman’s blood sugar during pregnancy. Also they did a study that the women that knew they could prevent diabetes for their child had a different outlook during pregnancy, and this had a totally different effect on their baby for the better.
4) Traffic related air pollution during pregnancy can have many bad birth outcomes such as premature delivery, lbw and heart malformation. Some researchers did a study with women in upper Manhattan and South Bronx to see how much pollution they were getting just by being on the streets. And the results were 100% of the women were exposed to PAH’s during their experiment. High levels of PAH can show through the baby by them scoring lower on IQ tests at young ages.
5) Prenatal environment can have a huge effect on the mental health for the baby. Evidence shows that woman that underwent starvation or a great deal of stress gives the baby a higher risk for schizophrenia. Babies that are in depressed or very anxious mothers, have a reaction when their mothers are put in stressful situations. So this shows that the mental health is taking form and almost all parts of the pregnancy.

alison zimny said...

1.The article is saying that heart disease is partially caused by the diet of ours mothers while we are in the womb. It is also saying that the amount of stress she is under can also influence our hearts later in life. Our gestation period has a major effect on how we grow up. Normally, heart disease is thought to be caused by the over indulgence of food. In the fetus’ case, this is not true. A person has a high chance to get heart disease if they don’t get good nutrition while in the womb. “The relationship between low birth weight and cardiovascular-disease risk remained robust.”
2.The article is saying that obesity can be traced to the amount of weight gained by a mother during pregnancy. A test was done to see if obesity is in your genes and not just the size of the mother. This test showed that an obese mother had obese children but when that same mother had surgery to reduce her weight, her children after were not obese like the first ones. This can be explained by the fact that their metabolism was different because of the way their mother ate during her pregnancy. This is saying that the prenatal environment of the later siblings affected the way their genes developed but it did not affect the DNA in their make-up.
3.The article is saying that diabetes is a genetic disease. A diabetic mother has high blood sugar and it can affect the metabolism of the child. This could predispose them to diabetes. The high blood sugar gives the fetus more of a chance to be over weight, also. Researchers think that if they find a way to control a diabetic mother’s blood sugar while she is pregnant, they can decrease the chances of children growing up with diabetes.
4.This article is saying that fetus’ are predisposed to contamination due to air pollution. Air pollution affects the fetus immensely. It causes premature babies, low birth weight, and heart problems. PAH was found in 100% of women from New York during their pregnancy. Of these women, 40% of their babies had small amounts of damage to their DNA from this PAH. This exposure causes these babies to have a higher cancer risk. Also, this exposure will affect the child’s learning ability in the future.
5.The prenatal environment can be linked to mental health in a few different ways. One way is that babies with mothers who either starve themselves or didn’t have proper nutrition during pregnancy have a greater risk to developing schizophrenia. Another way is that babies of anxious mothers show signs of this while still in the womb. Genetically, the fetuses are prone to stress if their mother was stressed or anxious during pregnancy. “A pregnant woman’s emotional state influences her offspring’s later susceptibility to mental illness.”

Nicole Mulski said...

1. David Barker, a British physician noticed an odd correlation on a map two decades ago: the poorest regions of England and Wales were the ones with the highest rates of heart disease. He wondered why this would be, when heart disease was supposed to be a condition of rich food and sedentary lifestyles? He investigated, and after comparing the adult health of some 15,000 individuals with their birth weight, he discovered an unexpected link between small birth size. There was often an indication of poor prenatal nutrition and heart disease in middle age. Faced with an inadequate food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts of its body, Barker says. This is a debt that comes due decades later in the form of a weakened heart.

2. At Harvard Medical School, a pair of studies conducted by researchers suggest that
tendency for obesity is being programmed in the womb may be the case. The greater a woman's weight gain during pregnancy, one study found, the higher the risk that her child would be overweight by age 3. The second study indicated that this relationship persists into the offspring's adolescence. Compared with the teenagers of women who had moderate weight gain during pregnancy, those of women who had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese. However, of course, children could share eating habits or a genetic predisposition to obesity with their mothers.

3. An associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Colorado at Denver, Dana Dabela says, diabetic woman's high blood sugar during pregnancy appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. This may well be a factor in the alarming rise of the disease nationally. But it opens a door to intervention as well. "If we could intensively control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy," Dabelea says, "we could really bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes."

4. The director for the center for Childrens Environmental Health, Perera, at Columbia University, became interested in the effects of pollution on fetuses more than 30 years ago, when she was conducting research on environmental exposures and cancer in adults. "I was looking for control subjects to compare to the adults in my study, individuals who would be completely untouched by pollution," she says. She hit on the idea of using babies just out of the womb as her controls, but when she received the results from samples of umbilical-cord blood and placental tissue she'd sent to a laboratory to be analyzed, she was sure there was a mistake. "I was shocked," she says. "These samples I thought would be pristine already had evidence of contamination."

5. Catherine Monk, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has found a startling proposal that a pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. Monk says, "Research indicates that even before birth, mothers' moods may affect child development. At her lab, pregnant women who are depressed or anxious and pregnant women with normal moods are hooked up to devices that measure their respiration, heart rate, blood pressure and nervous-system arousal. They also measure the movements and heart rate of their fetuses, and then subjected to challenging mental exercises. All women show physiological signs of stress in response to the tests, but only the fetuses of depressed or anxious.

Brooke Truitt said...

Brooke Truitt

1. The article focuses on the Barker hypthosis and the origins of heart disease. Twenty years ago, David Barker, a British physician, noticed a correlation in England between poor regions and heart disease. After an investigation, he concluded that in poor areas where malnutrition is common, heart disease is more common. The fetus gives the nutrients that it does receive to more vital organs, such as the brain. Other parts of the body, including the heart are weakened and show problems later in life. When Barker presented this idea to his colleagues, they laughed at him and didn't see it to be true.

2. There is a lot to prenatal impact on obesity. It is no secret that Americans today are more over weight than ever. Researchers at Harvard found that the greater a mother's weight gain during pregnancy, the more likely the baby will be over weight by age 3. Enviroment after the baby is born still plays a vital factor in obesity, but helping women keep a healthy weight before, during, and after pregnancy will help stop obesity before it even starts.

3. During pregnancy, a woman with high blood sugar that already has diabetes, disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus, already predisposing it to diabetes. The new question arising is, if doctors can control the blood sugar levels of pregnant mothers, would that cut down the number of babies born predisposed to diabetes? The Pima Indians of the Gila River Reservation in Arizona have the highest rate of type two diabetes in the world. It is most likely caused by genetic components. A study now shows that prenatal experience also has an effect.

4. The director of the Center for Children's Health at Columbia wanted to do an experiment on the effects of pollution. She tested umblicial cord blood and placenta tissue and when the results came back, she saw that it had already been contaminated by the pollution. Throughout many studies, pollution has shown to cause premature birth, low birth weight, and heart defects. Many big cities, such as New York have switched to cleaner technology and put limitations on diesal buses and trucks.

5. A mother's prenatal enviroment can be linked to her baby's health. Mother's moods can impact a child, both during and after a pregancy. There has been evidence that women who experience starvation or excessive stress during pregnancy have a higher risk of giving birth to children that will devolp schizophrenia.

Stephanie C. said...

1. David Barker, British physician, researched the origins of heart disease. He discovered a correlation between small birth size and heart disease in middle age. Barker stated that without an adequate food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to the brain, leaving other organs weakened. For years this was known as the Barker hypothesis. Similar studies have been conducted, and Barker’s theory is still supported.

2. Studies conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical suggest that the tendency for obesity is programmed in the womb. Findings support this theory- the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, the higher the risk that her child will be overweight by the age of three. This correlation often continues into adolescence. Children born to women who had antiobesity surgery were 52% less likely to be obese than siblings born to the same mother when she was still overweight. Helping women maintain a healthy weight during pregnancy is the best way to stop obesity before it starts.

3. The article cites the Pima Indians of the Gila River Reservation in Arizona, who have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes in the world. Diabetes has a significant genetic component. A study that followed a large group of Pima Indians since 1965 points to prenatal experience for the onset of diabetes. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus. This predisposes it to diabetes and obesity. Intensively controlling a diabetic women’s blood sugar during pregnancy could bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes.

4. Research has tied exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy to a host of adverse birth outcomes. These include premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart problems. Children exposed to high levels PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) had lower IQ scores compared to children who were exposed to lower levels of PAH before birth. More concern is now put on fetuses than on elderly people and asthma patients. New York City has made an effort to clean their air by switching to cleaner transportation technology.

5. Prenatal environment could also influence our intelligence, temperament, and sanity. Evidence indicates that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. A pregnant woman’s mental state can shape her offspring’s psyche and influences her offspring’s later susceptibility to mental illness. Catherine Monk, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, conducted a study on pregnant mothers. Pregnant women who are depressed or anxious and pregnant women with normal moods were hooked up to devices measuring heart rate, blood pressure, and nervous-system arousal. Fetuses were monitored as well. When subjected to challenging mental exercises, all of the women showed physiological signs of stress in response to the tests. Only the fetuses of depressed or anxious women displayed disturbances of their own.

sean murray said...

1. The article shows the origin of heart disease. It says that it all comes down to the birth weight of people. This tends to come from poor nutrician in the womb.

2. The prenatal impact on obesity is the mothers weight gain during pregnancy. The more the mother gains the more likely the child will be obese.

3. Its shows how the womans high blood sugar affects the fetus' metabolism which leads to diabetes.

4. Poor air can lead to low birth weight, premature birth, heart malformations, and cancer. This air mainly comes from vehicle fumes.

5. Pregnant woman that experience starvation or extreme stress are prone to having a child with schizophrenia. The mothers mental state effects the childs. Depressed and anxious mothers during pregnancy cause mental disturbances.

Jennifer S said...

1.Summarize what the article says about the origins of heart disease.
Physician David Barker did a study of 15,000 adults and compared them with their birth weight. With this study he saw that there was a link with small birth size to heart disease and poor prenatal nutrition. He stated that when there is a lack of nutrient available the body gives majority to the brain, the most important organ, which leaves the heart weakened. His colleagues were happy with his discovery because they thought it had only to do with genetics and certain life health choices. Janet Edwards said that she knew health diseases were caused by risk factors. She did not however agree that it could occur as a fetus.

2. What is the prenatal impact on obesity?
Obesity affects a lot of Americans today. It is occurring now even in young children early in their lives. A Harvard Study stated that the baby’s weight can be influenced by how much the mother weighed during pregnancy. Mothers with greater weight gain were more likely to have children who were obese. Obesity is also caused by genetics and eating habits. A study in 2006 showed that 52% of children born from heavy mothers were heavier then when their siblings were born from their mother post surgery. Epigenetic modification can have an effect on baby’s metabolisms. Kral state that by studies, the intrauterine environment can be more important than anything else done by habit or genetically passed down.

3.What does the article state about the prenatal influence for developing diabetes?
Diabetic women can affect their child with their high blood sugar during pregnancy. This causes metabolism disruption in the fetus. Dana Dabelea said that diabetic mothers are responsible for their children having type two diabetes for the past 30 years. She does believe that they can cut down on the number of children with diabetes by controlling the pregnant woman’s blood sugar level. Daniel Benyshek says that people with fatalistic views about their diabetes is because they feel it was their genetic destiny. He does agree that prevention can change the cycle if the mothers are willing to make the effort.

4.Summarize findings about the impact of air pollution.
Frederica Perera, the director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health, started research thirty years ago on exposures and caner. This caused her to have an interest in effects of pollution on fetuses. She wanted to use newborns as her control in her studies however tests showed that babies were already affected by pollution in the womb. Perera then studied how traffic pollution caused certain birth defects. Low birth weight, premature births, and heart malformations were all outcomes from air pollution. A study of five hundred pregnant women with air monitors with them showed that PAH’s from cars is the same chemical found in cigarettes and smokestacks. 100% of the women were exposed to PAH’s during pregnancy and $0% of their babies showed damage from the chemical. This chemical can lead to risk of cancer. As children get older, a test showed that their IQ’s were lower due to exposure to PAH.

5. How might the prenatal environment be linked to mental health? Explain.
Scientists have been studying how conditions in the womb affect the fetuses physical and mental well being. It was studied that women who don’t eat enough or are over stressed have a risk of their child having schizophrenia. Catherine Monk studied how the mother’s mental condition and mood shapes her child’s. Labs hooked up depressed and anxious pregnant women to monitor their blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory and nervous system. With this they could also monitor the fetus’s heart rate. The majority of the fetuses’ showed stress, but those with depressed or anxious mothers had their own affects. Some fetuses have stress due to inheritance. The child can get these stresses and anxieties after intrauterine. Babies who are raised with depressed mothers usually grow up to feel the same, so a child can be shaped mentally in and out of the womb.

jennifer S said...

1.Summarize what the article says about the origins of heart disease.
Physician David Barker did a study of 15,000 adults and compared them with their birth weight. With this study he saw that there was a link with small birth size to heart disease and poor prenatal nutrition. He stated that when there is a lack of nutrient available the body gives majority to the brain, the most important organ, which leaves the heart weakened. His colleagues were happy with his discovery because they thought it had only to do with genetics and certain life health choices. Janet Edwards said that she knew health diseases were caused by risk factors. She did not however agree that it could occur as a fetus.

2. What is the prenatal impact on obesity?
Obesity affects a lot of Americans today. It is occurring now even in young children early in their lives. A Harvard Study stated that the baby’s weight can be influenced by how much the mother weighed during pregnancy. Mothers with greater weight gain were more likely to have children who were obese. Obesity is also caused by genetics and eating habits. A study in 2006 showed that 52% of children born from heavy mothers were heavier then when their siblings were born from their mother post surgery. Epigenetic modification can have an effect on baby’s metabolisms. Kral state that by studies, the intrauterine environment can be more important than anything else done by habit or genetically passed down.

3.What does the article state about the prenatal influence for developing diabetes?
Diabetic women can affect their child with their high blood sugar during pregnancy. This causes metabolism disruption in the fetus. Dana Dabelea said that diabetic mothers are responsible for their children having type two diabetes for the past 30 years. She does believe that they can cut down on the number of children with diabetes by controlling the pregnant woman’s blood sugar level. Daniel Benyshek says that people with fatalistic views about their diabetes is because they feel it was their genetic destiny. He does agree that prevention can change the cycle if the mothers are willing to make the effort.
4.Summarize findings about the impact of air pollution.
Frederica Perera, the director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health, started research thirty years ago on exposures and caner. This caused her to have an interest in effects of pollution on fetuses. She wanted to use newborns as her control in her studies however tests showed that babies were already affected by pollution in the womb. Perera then studied how traffic pollution caused certain birth defects. Low birth weight, premature births, and heart malformations were all outcomes from air pollution. A study of five hundred pregnant women with air monitors with them showed that PAH’s from cars is the same chemical found in cigarettes and smokestacks. 100% of the women were exposed to PAH’s during pregnancy and 52% of their babies showed damage from the chemical. This chemical can lead to risk of cancer. As children get older, a test showed that their IQ’s were lower due to exposure to PAH.

5. How might the prenatal environment be linked to mental health? Explain.
Scientists have been studying how conditions in the womb affect the fetuses physical and mental well being. It was studied that women who don’t eat enough or are over stressed have a risk of their child having schizophrenia. Catherine Monk studied how the mother’s mental condition and mood shapes her child’s. Labs hooked up depressed and anxious pregnant women to monitor their blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory and nervous system. With this they could also monitor the fetus’s heart rate. The majority of the fetuses’ showed stress, but those with depressed or anxious mothers had their own affects. Some fetuses have stress due to inheritance. The child can get these stresses and anxieties after intrauterine. Babies who are raised with depressed mothers usually grow up to feel the same, so a child can be shaped mentally in and out of the womb.

ERIN GOUGE said...

Erin Gouge
1. Summarize what the article says about the origins of heart disease.
The article states that a British physician named David Barker was doing research on Heart disease and started to do correlations between heart disease and possible causes of it. He later found a correlation between poor regions and high rate of heart disease. This later turned into low birth weight and nourishment of infants correlated with high rates of heart disease. Many people thought it was because of what you did in your life would explain why you have heart disease. But in some correlations studies, it could be what your mother does or eats while the fetus in the womb.

2. What is the prenatal impact on obesity?
Harvard researchers believe that the greater the mom’s weight gain is during pregnancy the more likely that the child during childhood and during adolesence, will have a greater risk of be overweight. Children born to obese moms were compared to their siblings who were born after an anti-obesity surgery. Both pre and post surgerical children had similar genes and practiced similar eating habit. However, both pre and post surgerical children has different intrauterine environments. Research shows that children born to moms after surgery were 52% less likely to become obese. Also a similar study showed that mothers who lost weight after they delivered a baby and had children after the weight loss had children less likely to become obese than their siblings. Research shows that mothers who are lower weight metabolize foods better than those of heavier mothers and this is thought to be called, epigenetic modification. This means that the environmental aspects affect the genes but doesn’t do anything to the DNA.

3. What does the article state about the prenatal influence for developing diabetes?
Research shows that women with high blood sugar during pregnancy affects the metabolism of the growing fetus. If blood sugar can be strictly controlled during pregnancy, a reduction in the number of children who get diabetes will occur. Daniel Benyshek finds that when he shares evidence that can positively affect the health of offspring to mom’s with high blood sugar, moms will change their eating behaviors. Mr. Benyshek stated that young moms are more receptive to positive changes.

4. Summarize findings about the impact of air pollution.
Frederica Perera is the director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University. She studied the effects of pollution on fetuses. Her method idea was to study babies right out of the womb but when the result of the umbilical cord test indicated that there was evidence of contamination, her focus was now directed to stopping pollution. She found that exposures to traffic and air pollution led to premature delivery, low birth weight and heart problems. In 1998, she placed monitors on 500 pregnant women. These monitors revealed that all of the women were exposed to air pollutants and babies born to mom’s with the highest degree of exposure showed cognitive delays at age 3.
5. How might the prenatal environment be linked to mental health? Explain.
Evidence supports that moms exposed to extreme stress has a greater chance of giving birth to children with schizophrenia. A study was performed in China whereby 30 years of records were evaluated. One part of the study revealed that moms pregnant during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day war were more likely to give birth to babies that would eventually have schizophrenia when they become young adults. Another researcher, Catherine Monk, stated the a pregnant women’s mental health can shape her child’s psyche. She studied whether of not a pregnant mom’s mood can be transmitted to her offspring. A test was conducted on moms that showed signs of depression and those who did not. Research shows that both moms showed signs of stress when given the test but only the fetuses of moms that were depressed showed some disturbances.

Sarah DeRita said...

Part 1
1. A British Physician named David Barker noticed that the poorest regions of England and Wales were the ones with the highest rates of heart disease. He decided to investigate and discovered a link between small birth size and heart disease in middle age. He conjured that when faced with an inadequate food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, and skimps on other parts of the body such as the heart. Decades later, this can be linked to heart disease. Colleges scoffed at his idea, however he found much evidence of the correlation between birth weight and heart disease. Many studies have been done since Barker, all showing a strong relationship between birth weight and heart disease.
2. A pair of studies done by researchers at Harvard Medical School, suggested that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, the higher the risk that her child would be overweight by age 3. The second study showed that this relationship persists into the child’s adolescence. To show that this was not just a result of shared eating habits or a predisposition to obesity with their mothers, researchers compared children born to obese mothers with their siblings born after their mothers had anti obesity surgery. It was found that children born after their mothers lost weight had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become obese than there brothers and sisters born before their mother’s weight loss.
3. The Pima Indians of the Gila River Reservation in Arizona have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes in the world. Researchers performed a study that followed a group of Pima Indians, and found that during pregnancy, a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar appeared to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. An investigator on the study concluded that exposure to maternal diabetes in utero, accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. It also may be a factor in the increase of the disease nationally. These facts open the door for intervention. By controlling a diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy, the number of children who develop diabetes could be reduced.

Sarah DeRita said...

Part 2
4. Perera, the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University, decided to conduct a study on the effects of pollution on fetuses. Perera was originally conducting research on environmental exposures and cancer in adults, and needed a control group that had not been exposed to any pollutants. When taking samples of umbilical cord blood and placental tissue of babies just out of the womb, it was evident that they already had signs of contamination. This prompted studies that yielded results showing that pollution during pregnancy causes adverse birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. Studies have also shown that exposure to PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) in the womb is linked to an increased risk of cancer and cognitive delays.

Sarah DeRita said...

Part 3
5. Scientists are studying the possibility that intrauterine conditions can even influence our intelligence, temperament, and sanity. Studies have shown that that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. For example, a study of the health records of more than 88,000 people born in Jerusalem between 1964 and 1976 found that the offspring of women, who were pregnant during the time of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, were significantly more likely to develop schizophrenia as young adults. A woman named Catherine Monk made an even more startling proposal that a pregnant woman's mental state can affect her offspring's psyche. She proved this point by performing a study on pregnant women who were depressed and anxious and ones with regular moods. They were hooked up to devices that measured things such as their respiration, heart rate and blood pressure. The movements and heart rate of their fetuses were also monitored. The results found that all of the women showed physiological signs of stress in response to the tests, but only the fetuses of depressed or anxious women displayed disturbances of their own. A woman’s mental health during pregnancy could possibly influence her offspring's later susceptibility to mental illness, as the differences Monk found through her study seem to persist outside of the womb. However, things such as being raised by a parent with mental illness, and having a predisposition to mental illness are both strong factors. The intrauterine environment may be a third influence.

eileen marge said...

1. Within the article physician David Barker researched the influences on heart disease. In his research he compared the adult health of over 15,000, and found that sedentary lifestyle isn’t the only contribution to heart disease. Braker also found a correlation between small birth size and heart disease later in life. He concluded that when the fetus doesn’t have adequate nutrients it takes what it has and send it to the brain leaving other organs without the nutrients that they need.

2. The Prenatal impact on obesity is suggested the greater the weight gain of the mother during the pregnancy the greater the risk the child could be over weight by the age of 3. Rather than the children of mothers who only had a moderate weight gain. Also eating habits and genetic predisposition is discussed. Research has been done on children with obese mothers that have siblings that were born after the mother had an antiobesity surgery. It has shown that the children born after the surgery gained similar eating habits but were 52% less likely to become obese than the other sibling.

3. The article looks at the Pima Indians on the Gila River Reservation in Arizona, which has the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in the world. The research states that the prenatal influence for developing diabetes is mostly based on the mother’s sugar levels. High sugar seems to disrupt the development of the fetus metabolism. The interruption of this may lead to the predisposition to obesity and diabetes. In addition to this researched showed that Pima children who were exposed to maternal diabetes increased type 2 diabetes increased over the past 30 years.

eileen marge said...

Eileen Marge continued..

4. Findings about the impact of air pollution in the article were based on the research found in the children of New York City. It states that pregnant women were exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that come from car exhaust, cigarette and factory smoke. After the pregnant women had their babies studies showed that 40% of them had DNA damage from the fumes. Further research also showed that children exposed to PAHs scored lower on school assessment, and had lower IQ test scores. As a result large cities have tried to reduce the harmful fumes in a effort to help the surrounding communities health.

5. There is a good connection between prenatal health and mental health. As stated in the article, children born to mothers with schizophrenia were twice as likely to develop it as well. Along with this, the children of women in Jerusalem during the time of the Arab-Israeli six-day war had a very good chance of developing schizophrenia as well. Catherine Monk a professor at Columbia did research on women with mental health issues. Her research showed the fetus of mothers who are depressed or anxious displayed disturbances. In addition to this the mothers emotional state is taken in to consideration, some women are genetically predisposed to depression or anxiety, which might carry on to their children

Ashley Mealey said...

1.)The highest rates of heart disease were found in poor regions of England and Wales. Barker believes small birth size is related to heart disease because small birth size is usually due to poor prenatal nutrition. Due to inadequate food supply, the fetus gives nutrients to the brain, while skimping on other parts of the body, later forming a weakened heart. Other people did research on heart disease trying to disprove Barker’s theory that it originates as a fetus. All they found was that low birth weight and heart disease remained linked together.
2.)A study showed that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, the higher risk that her child would be overweight by the age of three. Women who had children after an antiobesity surgery were 52% less likely to be obese. Also, children born to mothers who lost weight, had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become obese. Children born to mothers after weight loss surgery had better metabolisms and processed fats and carbohydrates in a healthier way. Overall, women need to maintain a healthy weight before and during pregnancy to stop obesity before it starts.
3.)A diabetic woman’s high blood sugar, during pregnancy, appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. The exposure to maternal diabetes accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes. All we need to do is control diabetic women’s blood sugar during pregnancy, which would bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes. When Benyshek shared this information with the Native American tribes, they were very hopeful. They now know that they can make a few simple changes while pregnant to reduce the offspring’s risk for diabetes.
4.)The impact of air pollution can cause premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. A study in Manhattan showed that one hundred percent of women were exposed to PAHs during their pregnancies. After their babies were born, the cord blood from the infants showed that forty percent had some DNA damage from PAHs. The damage of air pollution has been linked to increased cancer risk. Also, kids exposed to high levels of PAH were more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at three, and at five they scored lower on IQ tests than kids who had less exposure to PAH.
5.)Prenatal conditions influence our intelligence, temperament, and sanity. There is evidence that shows women who were subjects of starvation and stress gave birth to children with higher risks of schizophrenia. In the mid-20th century in China there was a famine. During this famine, children born to mothers suffering from the famine were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those who were born any other time. This shows that women who do not have a good nutrition or are malnourished have a doubled risk of a child with a mental illness.

lindseyherts said...

1. The origins of heart disease came up two decades ago by a British physician named David Barker. He noticed that there was an odd correlation that the poorest regions of England and Wales had high rates of heart disease. Barker eventually discovered an unexpected link between heart disease in middle age and small birth size, which is often an indication of poor prenatal nutrition. He believes that the fetus diverts nutrients to the brain, while the heart is malnourished and weakened. Barker was laughed at when he presented his data, and for years the idea was known as the Barker hypothesis. An epidemiologist, Janet Rich-Edwards, set out to disprove this hypothesis by analyzing findings from the Nurses’ Health Study, but was unsuccessful. The relationship between heart disease and low birth weight remained strong, even with two dozen similar studies conducted.
2. The prenatal impact on obesity has been studied through many experiments. One study states that the greater a woman’s weight gain during her pregnancy, the higher the risk the child would be overweight by three years old. A second study indicates that the relationship persists into the child’s adolescence years. Researchers have compared the obese mothers’ babies to their siblings born after the mothers had an obesity surgery. This has shown that half of children with obese mothers who were born after the mothers’ surgeries are less likely to be obese and that these children have lost weight and are less likely to become obese than their older siblings. A professor of surgery and medicine named John Kral states that it may be that, compared to genes or shared eating habits, that the intrauterine environment is even more important. The best hope for stopping obesity before the start is to help women maintain a healthy weight before and during her pregnancy.
3. The article states that during pregnancy, a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Dana Dabelea says that exposure to the maternal diabetes in utero accounts for the increase in Type 2 diabetes over the past thirty years among Pima children. Dabelea thinks that if people can control their blood sugar during pregnancy, it is possible to bring down the amount of children who go on to develop diabetes. A medical anthropologist named Daniel Benyshek has found that members of Arizona’s Native American tribes who believe that diabetes is their genetic destiny tend to hold certain attitudes about the disease. When he shares his findings with the tribe, the idea that changes during pregnancy could help the baby could possibly reduce the risk of diabetes causes a much more hopeful and engaged response. These women would do anything to help their little ones.

lindseyherts2 said...

4. Frederica Perera was just trying to find a control subject to compare to other adults in her study, people that wouldn’t be harmed at all by pollution. So, she decided to turn to fetuses right out of the womb, and when she tested samples of umbilical cord blood and placenta tissue, she was shocked. They were all harmed from pollution. So, Perera has done research to tie exposure to traffic-related pollution during pregnancy to hosts of adverse birth outcomes, like low birth weight. One study tested the air pollution throughout two days of some women’s lives. 100% were affected meaning if they were pregnant, the baby would be affected too. Analysis showed that those exposed prenatally have higher levels of damage linked to increased cancer risk and didn’t do as well on IQ and assessment tests than other children who were less exposed. Now New York City is trying to turn to cleaner technology, which helps the fetuses in the womb by being less exposed to air pollution.
5. It is possible that intrauterine conditions influence our intelligence and temperament, not only our physical health. For example, evidence shows that pregnant women who are under starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with higher schizophrenia risks. There have been studies to prove this, that when women are under more stress and are more emotional, their children have had a greater chance to develop schizophrenia. Catherine Monk came up with the idea that a pregnant women’s mental state can change her offspring’s psyche. Monk studied her hypothesis and hooked up devices to anxious or depressed pregnant women, then a control group of normal emotional women. All the women showed signs of stress, but only the fetuses of depressed or anxious women showed disturbances of their own. From these results, Monk explains that any woman’s heart rate or blood pressure, or their stress hormone levels, can affect the fetus, influencing the individual’s first environment and thereby its development. This could even be that a pregnant woman’s emotional state influences her offspring’s vulnerability to mental illnesses. So this research is showing how we really started out to become who we are.

sflanigan said...

Sean Flanigan
Psych

1) In the article Living’ in the Future in Time many heart related diseases and many other diseases directly linked to poor nutrition while pregnant, the body weight of the mother, the blood sugar of the mother, exposure to pollution during pregnancy. This hypothesis was first conceived by Dr. David Parker who noticed that low-birth weight had a direct correlation which high cholesterol and obesity. The poor blood flow goes to more important parts of the fetus, like the brain, and then it leaves the heart of the baby prone to disease later in life. Other doctors have linked that the mother’s weight and the weight gained during pregnancy may also contribute to there son or daughter’s chance of being obese, and doctors in Colorado studying Native Americans who have diabetes and don’t regulate their blood sugar concluded that it increases the chances of their children having diabetes and other heart disease.
2) According to the article the prenatal impact on obesity is that if the mother is overweight her child is more likely to be obese. Studies conducted by the Harvard School of Medicine suggest that the more weight gained during pregnancy the more likely that kid will be overweight. Also a second study suggests that the child’s weight problems may continue into adolescence. Researches have also compared siblings that one was born when the mother was obese then the younger one born after she has lost weight. The data shows that 52% of the younger ones where not obese then the one born when the mother was overweight.
3) When a mother is pregnant and diabetic they have an extra responsibility, because that can be passed down to the child if she is not careful. When a mother’s blood sugar is high it tends to interrupt the fetus metabolism, and lead to the disease being passed down. Studies done by the University of Colorado on Pima children suggest that if pregnant diabetic women can control their blood sugar they can decrease the risk of passing it down to their kids. This would be a major help for Native Americans who generally have a higher risk of getting diabetes. Only some simple changes can prevent your kid from having diabetes
4) Air pollution can affect the fetus as well. According to test done in NY a pregnant mother in NYC is constantly exposed to a pollutant know as PAH which is a know carcinogen. Prenatal exposed to PAH increases the chances of cancer in later life. It also was also linked to lower IQ’s and cognitive delays. But this has prompted a green movement and now women are less exposed to pollution now thanks to green buses, and restrictions on diesel cars.
5) A stressful prenatal environment can lead to a mental illness. The prenatal environment can shape the child’s psyche. The fetus of anxious and depressed people show many disturbances in studies done my Monk. It could be because the nervous system of the fetus is adapting itself to the emotional state of the mother.

shannen gentry said...

1. In the article it states that the origin of heart disease comes from the prenatal environment. From an experiment done by physician David Barker a theory was concluded. It was noticed that small birth size and heart disease where somehow linked. The conclusion was then drawn that poor prenatal nutrition played a huge role on the cause of heart disease. It is believed that the fetus diverts nutrients to its brain (the most important organ) while leaving out other organs, which is a cost paid later in life when a weakened heart shows.
2. Obesity has become a big problem across America and this issue can begin at the beginning of your life. Experiments have proven that depending on how much weight the mother gains during pregnancy is a major factor on if the child will be obese. Other factors such as genetics and eating habits also determine the child’s chance of obesity but the prenatal environment plays a role as well. If a mother can maintain a healthy weight during pregnancy they may be stopping obesity for their child before it starts.
3. It is made clear in the article that developing diabetes is greatly genetic. However, it also states in the article that a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar level can predispose the baby to diabetes. Her high level affects the baby’s developing metabolism. More babies in the fetus being exposed to the mothers’ diabetes are believed to be why Type Two diabetes has increased over the years. It is a goal to control diabetic mothers’ blood sugar level to prevent diabetes in their children.
4. In the article it explains how air pollution was never expected to have an effect on unborn babies, until studies proved these ideas wrong. Experiments were conducted after findings of contamination in newborns were found. After much research and experimenting Frederica Perera, the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University, discovered the effect of pollution. Babies’ whose mothers were in places of high pollution when pregnant grew up to show signs of damage. They scored lower on IQ tests, were cognitively delayed and were at higher risk for cancer.
5. The prenatal environment not only affects the baby physical but also mentally as well. It is believed and proven that the mother’s mood, emotional state, and stress level has a great impact on how the baby will be. The mother’s mental state is a big factor on the baby’s. Although personality is mostly genetically inherited or born, it is thought that the roots of temperamental variations go back to the womb.

cori b pink said...

1. David Baker, a physician, discovered an unexpected link between small birth size- often an indication of poor prenatal nutrition- and heart disease in middle age. When the fetus has inadequate food supply, it diverts nutrients to its most important organ- the brain- while cuttin back on otherf important organs like the heart. One epidemiologist, Janet Rich-Edwards, didn't believe Baker's hypothesis and set out to disprove it. She found similar data. She analyzed findings from Nurse's Health Study and found that the relationship between low birth weight and cardiovascular disease risk remained high.

2.One study found that the greater a women's weight gain during pregnancy, the higher risk that her child would be overweight at age 3. A second study showed that this could continue into the child's adolescence. When compared with teenagers of women who had an average weight gain during pregnancy, those of women that had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese. Some researchers found that children gestated by women postsurgery were 52% less likely to be obese than siblings born to the same mother when she was still heavy. A second study found that children born after their mothers lost weight had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become obese than their older brothers or sisters.

3. Diabetes has been found to have an additional influence: prenatal experience. During pregnancy, a diabetic women's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing the fetus to diabetes and obesity. The exposure to maternal diabetes in utero makes up for most of the increase in Type2 diabetes among the Pima children over the past 30 years according to one study. Dana Dabelea found out a way to maybe prevent this exposure to diabetes. She suggests that if we could control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy, then we could really bring down the number of children who go on to develop dibetes. Another observation made by Daniel Benyshek was that the role of gestational factors in disease can change individual behavior. He finds that those who believe in diabetes have a genetic destiny to tend to hold fatalistic attitudes about the illness. But just the idea of being able to prevent the exposure to diabetes helped raise hope aganst the problem.

4. One study made about air pollution effecting the fetus was done by Frederica Perera. She had pregnant women not exposed to air pollution be the control groups and pregnant women that were be the experiment group. What she found has tied exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy to host of adverse birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. Analyses of cord blood from the fetus's showed that 40% had subtle DNA damage from PAHs- damage that has been linked to an increase risk for cancer.

5. Evidence from one study showed that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress gave birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. Also, children born to women suffering from a famine that occured in China in the mid-20th century were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those gestated at other times. It was also found that a pregnant women's mental state can shape her offsprings psyche. An example of this would be a study that showed all of the women with signs of stress during the study, but only the fetus's of depressed or anxcious women display disturbances of their own.

Alisa Spitelle said...

1. Heart disease is acquired through the experiences of being in utero. Twenty years ago, British physician, David Barker, came up with a conclusion to his investigation. He had noticed that heart disease in middle age and small birth size were strongly correlated. He concluded that when a fetus receives nutrients, it diverts them to the different parts; the brain receiving the most. Since small birth size is an indication of a poor prenatal health, it is very likely to say that this lack of nutrients can make the fetus more vulnerable to heart disease decades after their birth.

2. One reason that children are overweight has do to with the mother; the greater the mother's weight gain, the higher the risk that her child will become overweight by the age of 3. This same study was also done by comparing the teenagers of whose mothers had an average weight gain to those who had an excessive weight gain. The results were similar to those of the previous study; the children that were born to the mothers that gained more weight tended to become overweight themselves. Sibling studies have also been done with this topic. The later-born children inherited similar genes as the older siblings and practiced similar eating patterns. However, they experienced different intrauterine environments. These children were also 52% less likely to become obese than their older siblings if their mother had weight loss surgery after the older ones were born.

3. Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero accounts for most of the increase in TYpe 2 diabetes amoung Pima children over the past 30 years. There has also been a thought that intensively control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy could really bring down the number of children of the Pima Indians. It has also been discovered that those, especially in this region, who believe that their diabetes is their genetic destiny tend to hold fatalistic attitudes about the illness. Daniel Benyshek, a medical anthropologist thought that if some changes were made while the women were pregnant, the better chance that the babies would be healthier. Many of the women could not do it freely on their own and keep their diet going. However, they were able to do it for those strict nine months if it meant that their child would be healthier.

4. Exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy can cause low birth weight, premature delivery, and heart malformations. A study in 1998 called for 500 pregnant women from Manhattan and the South Bronx to wear an identical backpack for two days straight. In this backpack was a monitor that measured the PAH levels in the air; PAH stands for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These monitors revealed that 100% of these women were exposed to PAH during their pregnancies. After the babies were born and the cord bloods were tested, researchers found that 40% had subtle DNA damage from PAH, damage that has been linked to increased cancer risk. Those that were exposed high levels of PAH were twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3, and also scored lower on IQ tests.

5. Evidence indicates that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher rate of schizophrenia. A 30 year study was done in China studying the prenatal factors can play as a role. In a particular region, a famine had occured and residents experienced severe malnutrition. The individuals born to women suffering the malnutrition were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those gestated at other times. Also, women's heart rate and blood pressure, or their levels of stress hormones, could affect the intrauterine milieu over the nine months of gestation. It also could be a fact that a pregnant woman's emotional state influence her offspring's later susceptibility to mental illness.

Nicole Craig said...

1. A Britain physician named David Barker discovered an unexpected link between small birth size, often caused by poor prenatal nutrition. Faced with not enough food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts. That causes a weakened heart decades later.

2. A pair of studies by researchers at Harvard Medial School suggest that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, one study found, the higher the risk that child would be overweight by age three. The second study found it depends on the offspring’s adolescence. Compared with the teenagers of women, who had normal weight gain during pregnancy, those of women who had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese.

3. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero is the cause of most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. Dana Debelea, investigator on the study at the University or Colorado at Denver say it may well be a factor in the rise of the disease nationally. Daniel Benyshek, a medical anthropologist at the University of Nevada, says “the idea that some simple changes made during pregnancy could reduce the offspring’s risk for diabetes fosters a much more hopeful and engaged response.”

4. Researchers said exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy to the cause of birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. 100 % of women are exposed to PAHs, a type of pollutant that comes from vehicle exhaust and in the fume release by cigarettes and factory smokestacks, during their pregnancies. After the babies were born, analyses of cord blood from the infants showed that 40% had subtle DNA damage from this. It has been linked to increased cancer risk. The effects were more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3, scoring lower on an assessment that predicts performance in school; at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests than children who received less exposure to PAHs in the womb.

5. Evidence indicates that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. A pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. The fetuses nervous system are already being shaped by their emotional states. It could even be that a pregnant women’s emotional state influences her offspring’s later susceptibility to mental illness.

Nicole Craig said...

1. A Britain physician named David Barker discovered an unexpected link between small birth size, often caused by poor prenatal nutrition. Faced with not enough food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts. That causes a weakened heart decades later.

2. A pair of studies by researchers at Harvard Medial School suggest that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, one study found, the higher the risk that child would be overweight by age three. The second study found it depends on the offspring’s adolescence. Compared with the teenagers of women, who had normal weight gain during pregnancy, those of women who had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese.

3. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero is the cause of most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. Dana Debelea, investigator on the study at the University or Colorado at Denver say it may well be a factor in the rise of the disease nationally. Daniel Benyshek, a medical anthropologist at the University of Nevada, says “the idea that some simple changes made during pregnancy could reduce the offspring’s risk for diabetes fosters a much more hopeful and engaged response.”

4. Researchers said exposure to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy to the cause of birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. 100 % of women are exposed to PAHs, a type of pollutant that comes from vehicle exhaust and in the fume release by cigarettes and factory smokestacks, during their pregnancies. After the babies were born, analyses of cord blood from the infants showed that 40% had subtle DNA damage from this. It has been linked to increased cancer risk. The effects were more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3, scoring lower on an assessment that predicts performance in school; at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests than children who received less exposure to PAHs in the womb.

5. Evidence indicates that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. A pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. The fetuses nervous system are already being shaped by their emotional states. It could even be that a pregnant women’s emotional state influences her offspring’s later susceptibility to mental illness

sam hall said...

1. The article states that our life in the womb can affect our health much later in life, like heart disease. David Barker found a pattern and link between small birth size and heart disease later in life. Most scientists made fun of this idea because it was thought that your current risk factors determined your odds of developing the disease. We have all heard that what the mother does while pregnant can affect her baby for the rest of its life and this is proving that it is very true. The womb is a target for prevention so scientist can conquer heart disease and obesity before birth.
2. There are many studies that connect prenatal care with obesity. There is a pair of studies that suggest that the more weight a woman gains during pregnancy, the higher the risk would be that her child would be overweight by age 3. Also, the teenagers of women who had a moderate weight gain compared to those who had excessive weight gain, were more likely to be obese. Some children’s metabolisms were in fact made normal because their mothers had weight-loss surgery. The intrauterine environment may be more important than genetics or shared eating habits.
3. Diabetes is a very serious disease that needs to be taken care of very vigilantly especially while pregnant. While pregnant, a diabetic woman’s high blood pressure can disturb the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. The fetus’ exposure to maternal diabetes can account for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children. This goes along with the rise of the disease nationally also.
4. As we all know air pollution is very bad for a normal adult’s health, so we should be able to draw the conclusion that it is very bad for health of an unborn baby. It has been discovered that traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy can result in premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. 40% of babies from a test group of mothers that lived in New York showed a subtle DNA damage from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, a type of pollutant that comes from vehicle exhaust and is also present in the fumes released by cigarettes and factory smokestacks. The air and the pollutants that the mother breathes are the same air and pollutants that the baby is breathing.
5. Scientists are exploring the possibility that intrauterine conditions don’t only affect our physical health but also our mental health. There is evidence that shows pregnant woman that are stressed or have been starving bear children with a greater risk of schizophrenia. There is a proposal that a pregnant woman’s mental state can shape her child’s psyche and the mother’s mood can influence the child’s development. Being raised by a mother with a mental illness can give way to the child having a mental illness.

Lauren Fowler said...

1. The article refers to a study on the correlation of heart disease linked to low birth weight. Babies with poor nutrition were usually the ones to develop heart disease. The lower income families tend to have babies with lower birth weight. The baby's body sends most of the nutrition to the brain and the heart is somewhat neglected and makes it weaker later in life. The study has been repeated numerous times so the findings are consistent.


2. The more a mother gains during pregnancy, the higher the chance of her child becoming obese. Babies born to larger mothers ended up being larger than the children born to mothers who gained less. Children born to mothers who have lost weight or gotten surgery to lose weight after their first pregnancy, were at a healthier weight than their sibling. The child born after the mother acquired a healthy weight still shared similar eating habits but was born healthier and has a smaller chance of becoming obese.



3. The article states that a mother with diabetes may affect her baby's metabolism predisposing it to diabetes. Babies exposed to diabetes in the womb are more likely to get type two diabetes in the Pima community. The Pima community has the highest rate of diabetes in the world. The women with diabetes have high blood sugar which causes the baby's metabolism to be affected which could lead to diabetes.


4.The impact of air pollution on fetuses is more than most would guess. The pollution can result in low birth weight, heart problems, learning disabilities and even cancer. Even people in areas with less pollution were still contaminated. Women in New York experience much more pollution which can damage the fetuses DNA. Overall pollution is riskier than ever thought and is an ongoing problem.

5. The prenatal environment can be linked to mental health by the actions of the mother and her environment. A mother's stress or malnutrition can transfer to her baby which puts it at risk for schizophrenia. A mother with mental illnesses herself could pass to her baby. The mood and stress of a mother do affect the baby. The nervous system can be manipulated by the mother's moods and anxiety.

shannen gentry said...

1. In the article it states that the origin of heart disease comes from the prenatal environment. From an experiment done by physician David Barker a theory was concluded. It was noticed that small birth size and heart disease where somehow linked. The conclusion was then drawn that poor prenatal nutrition played a huge role on the cause of heart disease. It is believed that the fetus diverts nutrients to its brain (the most important organ) while leaving out other organs, which is a cost paid later in life when a weakened heart shows.
2. Obesity has become a big problem across America and this issue can begin at the beginning of your life. Experiments have proven that depending on how much weight the mother gains during pregnancy is a major factor on if the child will be obese. Other factors such as genetics and eating habits also determine the child’s chance of obesity but the prenatal environment plays a role as well. If a mother can maintain a healthy weight during pregnancy they may be stopping obesity for their child before it starts.
3. It is made clear in the article that developing diabetes is greatly genetic. However, it also states in the article that a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar level can predispose the baby to diabetes. Her high level affects the baby’s developing metabolism. More babies in the fetus being exposed to the mothers’ diabetes are believed to be why Type Two diabetes has increased over the years. It is a goal to control diabetic mothers’ blood sugar level to prevent diabetes in their children.
4. In the article it explains how air pollution was never expected to have an effect on unborn babies, until studies proved these ideas wrong. Experiments were conducted after findings of contamination in newborns were found. After much research and experimenting Frederica Perera, the director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University, discovered the effect of pollution. Babies’ whose mothers were in places of high pollution when pregnant grew up to show signs of damage. They scored lower on IQ tests, were cognitively delayed and were at higher risk for cancer.
The prenatal environment not only affects the baby physical but also mentally as well. It is believed and proven that the mother’s mood, emotional state, and stress level has a great impact on how the baby will be. The mother’s mental state is a big factor on the baby’s. Although personality is mostly genetically inherited or born, it is thought that the roots of temperamental variations go back to the womb.

RachelMcG said...

1. The origins of heart disease were looked at more closely two decades ago when a scientist, David Barker, realized that the poorest regions of England and Wales had the highest rate for heart disease. Many studies later, done by Barker and Rich-Edwards, showed a repeating pattern of result that those who had heart disease had a correlation of low birth weights. These results then showed that people could be prone to heart disease as early as when the fetus is in the womb. These results then changed the idea that heart disease origins were only from genetics and poor eating habits, but now would be prone to heart disease based on what happened when they were in the womb.
2. The prenatal impact on obesity is that one study showed that when a mother gained more during pregnancy, the higher the risk the child would be overweight by age 3. The second study showed that this continued through adolescence, when compared to children of mother’s who had normal weight gain, those who had excessive weight gain were more likely to be obese. Another stuffy was done to show that when the mother had surgery to reduce their own obesity, the children were 52% less likely to become obese than their siblings who shared the same eating habits, but different intrauterine environments.
3. The prenatal influence for developing diabetes is that during pregnancy a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar appears to interfere with the fetus developing its metabolism, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Exposure to diabetes in utero also explains the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children. Daniel Benyshek also states that women who feel they have no control over whether their child will have diabetes or not due to genetics they will look at it with a more negative attitude. If women look at diabetes and understand that during their pregnancy doing certain things may increase the likelihood of their child not having diabetes they will have more hope and a better view on things.
4. While Perera was conducting an experiment on air pollution and cancer, she decided to use newborn babies as her control, but when sending in umbilical cord blood and placental tissue, she realized that they had already had contamination. Research ahs tied exposure to traffic-related air pollution to produce multiple birth outcomes, low birth weight, premature delivery and heart malformations. One study in 1998 showed that 100% of 500 pregnant women spread out across Manhattan and South Bronx were exposed to PAH. After their babies were born 40% of them had damage to their DNA from the PAH, which has been linked to an increased cancer risk.
5. The prenatal environment might be linked to mental health because studies have shown that women who experienced extreme malnutrition or starvation during their pregnancies had babies that were more at risk to schizophrenia, which was shown by the babies born to women suffering the famine in China in the mid-20th century. Studies have also shown that a woman’s psyche may affect the child’s disposition, that the mother’s mood will disturb the child’s development.

Andrea Sparco said...

1. The article states a physician, David Barker, brought up a hypothesis about heart disease and how it is affected through the prenatal environment. While testing this hypothesis he discovered the link between low birth weight and heart disease. Low birth weight is an indication for poor prenatal nutrition mostly caused by poor food supply. There have been dozens of test done to prove him wrong; however, it cannot be done. Throughout the tests the one thing that remains the same is the relationship between low birth weight and heart disease.
2. Obesity is not only caused through genetics, but also the prenatal environment. A mother’s own weight affects the baby’s likeliness in becoming obese. Researchers studied mothers who had antiobesity surgery before and after having kids. Babies who were born after the mother had the surgery were 52% less likely to become obese compared to their older brother’s and sister’s, who were born before their mother had surgery. Also, the greater a women’s weight gain during pregnancy, the greater the increase their child is at risk in becoming obese by age 3.
3. During pregnancy, if a diabetic women’s high blood sugar predisposes the baby to diabetes. The high blood sugar interrupts the metabolism developing in the fetus. This kind of exposure has a much greater risk for Type 2 diabetes. If a diabetic women’s blood sugar could be controlled then there would be a significant decrease in children developing it. More young women are now taking action to stop this cycle and help their baby have a healthier life.
4. A certain kind of pollution is called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. This can come from car exhaust or cigarettes. A study was done to show that 100% of women were exposed to PAH throughout pregnancy. This has long term affects on a child, such as increased cancer risk, lower IQ, and more likely to be cognitively delayed. Because this has been kept track of, more buses and trucks are now switching to cleaner technology.
5. Children born to mothers who were stressed or starved are more likely to develop schizophrenia. A mother’s mood can affect child development. A woman’s emotional state during pregnancy can cause the baby so be more susceptible to illness. In a study where two women were exposed to stress only the fetuses of depressed women showed signs of disturbances. This shows how vital it is to take care of the prenatal environment.

Hazel C. said...

1.) British physician, David Barker, who noticed that poorest regions of England were the ones with the highest rate of heart disease, conducted the origin of heart disease. He compared the adult health of some 15,000 individuals with their birth weight, he discovered an unexpected link between small birth size, often an indication of poor prenatal nutrition, and heart disease in middle age. Also, faced with an inadequate food supply, Barker conjectured, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts of its body- a debt that comes due decades later in the form of a weakened heart.

2.) Obesity has a major impact on the prenatal environment. Evidence shows that the greater a woman's weight gain during pregnancy, the higher the risk that her child would be overweight by age 3. Children born after their mothers lost weight had lower birth weights and were three times less likely to become severely obese than their older brothers and sisters. It may be that the intrauterine environment is even more important than genes or shared eating habits in passing on a propensity for obesity. If that's so, helping women maintain a healthy weight before and during pregnancy may be the best hope for stopping obesity before it starts.

3.) The prenatal environment influences the development of diabetes. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Exposure to maternal diabetes in utero accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes. If you can control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy, it could really bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes. Simple changes made during pregnancy could reduce the offspring's risk for diabetes fosters a much more hopeful and engaged response.

4.) The impact of air pollution affects the fetus in many ways. Exposures to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy to a host of adverse birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. Analysis found that those exposed prenatally to high levels of PAHs were more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3, scoring lower on an assessment that predicts performance in school, and at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests.

5.) The prenatal environment is linked to mental health. Evidence indicates that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. Fetuses are already more sensitive to stress, fetuses' nervous systems are already being shaped by their mothers' emotional states. Women's heart rate and blood pressure, or their levels of stress hormones could affect the intrauterine milieu over the nine months of gestation. Pregnant woman's emotional state influences her offspring's later susceptibility to mental illness. The intrauterine environment is a third pathway by which mental illness is passed down in families.

Cole Preston said...

Cole Preston
Mrs. Albanese
Child Psych
10-27-10

1. Heart disease originates from low birth weight which is an effect of poor prenatal care by the mother. David Barker, a British physician, came up with a hypothesis that low birth weight has a connection to future heart disease. After his studies Barker indicated that the cause of low birth weight in England and Wales was because of poor food supply. When the body doesn’t receive enough nutrients, only the main organs receive it leaving others parts to be weaker such as the heart. There have been many doubts about his hypothesis and many tests to try and prove him wrong. But as for his ideas none of the other tests could show otherwise. Barker’s hypothesis on the relationship between low birth weight and heart disease stands correct.

2. Obesity is thought to be caused by many circumstances such as genetics, eating habits, adolescence and the amount of weight gained by the mother during pregnancy. There were two studies by Researchers at Harvard that proved two different results. The first study indicates that obesity is a result of the amount of weight gained by the mother during pregnancy and said the child can be overweight by the age of 3. The second study stated that the offspring’s adolescence was the cause of obesity after pregnancy. If a mother is obese while pregnant then the child has a much higher chance of being obese as well. Although if a mother is not obese during birth then there is a much smaller risk of the child being obese. These studies indicate that the mothers weight at the time of birth and weight gain during pregnancy have a big input on whether the baby will turn out obese or not.

3. The article states that risk of genetically passing down diabetes can be reduced by certain prenatal steps. Dana Dabelea believes that there are some simple changes that can be made during pregnancy that could reduce the offspring’s risk for diabetes. Her thought was that “if you can intensively control a diabetic woman’s blood sugar during pregnancy” the numbers of diabetes being genetically passed down would be reduced significantly. Now women with diabetes have an option to help prevent from passing it on. Women can now take steps in giving there child a chance for a better life without diabetes.

4. The most common type of pollution is called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are exposed in our air by cars cigarettes and smokestacks everyday. These pollutions can cause DNA damage, risks of cancer, and are more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at the age of 3. Children exposed to PAH’s score lower on IQ test. Than children who were less exposed. To prevent this from happening scientist have focused more on creating technology that is cleaner and safer to us and the environment. The results of this have shown that fetus’ are encountering fewer amounts of these PAH pollutions.

5. Mental health has been shown to be effected by stresses on the mother during pregnancy. Scientists have indicated that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. A Columbia professor indicated a pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. Research indicates that even before birth, mothers' moods may affect child development. Woman's heart rate and blood pressure, or their levels of stress hormones, could affect the mental state over the nine months of gestation. Being raised by a parent with mental illness can increase the risk of mental illness in the offspring. The stress levels of the mother during pregnancy have a huge effect on the child’s mental state in life.

Cole Preston said...

Cole Preston
Mrs. Albanese
Child Psych
10-27-10

1. Heart disease originates from low birth weight which is an effect of poor prenatal care by the mother. David Barker, a British physician, came up with a hypothesis that low birth weight has a connection to future heart disease. After his studies Barker indicated that the cause of low birth weight in England and Wales was because of poor food supply. When the body doesn’t receive enough nutrients, only the main organs receive it leaving others parts to be weaker such as the heart. There have been many doubts about his hypothesis and many tests to try and prove him wrong. But as for his ideas none of the other tests could show otherwise. Barker’s hypothesis on the relationship between low birth weight and heart disease stands correct.

2. Obesity is thought to be caused by many circumstances such as genetics, eating habits, adolescence and the amount of weight gained by the mother during pregnancy. There were two studies by Researchers at Harvard that proved two different results. The first study indicates that obesity is a result of the amount of weight gained by the mother during pregnancy and said the child can be overweight by the age of 3. The second study stated that the offspring’s adolescence was the cause of obesity after pregnancy. If a mother is obese while pregnant then the child has a much higher chance of being obese as well. Although if a mother is not obese during birth then there is a much smaller risk of the child being obese. These studies indicate that the mothers weight at the time of birth and weight gain during pregnancy have a big input on whether the baby will turn out obese

Cole Preston said...

3. The article states that risk of genetically passing down diabetes can be reduced by certain prenatal steps. Dana Dabelea believes that there are some simple changes that can be made during pregnancy that could reduce the offspring’s risk for diabetes. Her thought was that “if you can intensively control a diabetic woman’s blood sugar during pregnancy” the numbers of diabetes being genetically passed down would be reduced significantly. Now women with diabetes have an option to help prevent from passing it on. Women can now take steps in giving there child a chance for a better life without diabetes.

4. The most common type of pollution is called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are exposed in our air by cars cigarettes and smokestacks everyday. These pollutions can cause DNA damage, risks of cancer, and are more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at the age of 3. Children exposed to PAH’s score lower on IQ test. Than children who were less exposed. To prevent this from happening scientist have focused more on creating technology that is cleaner and safer to us and the environment. The results of this have shown that fetus’ are encountering fewer amounts of these PAH pollutions.

5. Mental health has been shown to be effected by stresses on the mother during pregnancy. Scientists have indicated that pregnant women subjected to starvation or extreme stress give birth to children with a higher risk of schizophrenia. A Columbia professor indicated a pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. Research indicates that even before birth, mothers' moods may affect child development. Women's heart rate and blood pressure, or their levels of stress hormones, could affect the mental state over the nine months of gestation. Being raised by a parent with mental illness can increase the risk of mental illness in the offspring. The stress levels of the mother during pregnancy have a huge effect on the child’s mental state in life.

Natalie Reynolds said...

1. The origins of heart disease first began to be studied when the British physician, David Barker, noticed a weird pattern in where the highest rates of heart disease was and investigated it further. After maintaining data on many individuals, he found that small birth size and heart disease in middle age were somewhat related. Small birth size can result from many factors, but it mainly indicates unhealthy prenatal nutrition on the woman’s part. When the fetus is not receiving enough nutrients, it makes sure to first send them to the most important organ, which is the brain. Of course this may result in lack of nutrients to other parts of the body, such as the heart, and this could result in a weakened heart later in life. At first when Barker told others of his findings they didn’t believe him one bit, but over time others began experimenting his theory and after repeating his results they had no choice but to agree with him.
2. In one study researchers from Harvard Medical School found that the more weight a woman gains during pregnancy puts her child at a higher risk for being overweight by the age of 3. In another study they found that the amount of weight gain during pregnancy also can have an effect on the child even up through their teenage years and life. There has also been more research done comparing children born to an obese mother before and after she had weight-loss surgery, which found that the child born before the surgery was 52% more likely than the child born after surgery to be obese. Basically women who are of healthy weight before and during pregnancy are more likely to have average weight babies than those women who are overweight or obese.
3. The article states that through research of the Pima Indians- who have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes in the world- it has been found that genetics may not be the only component in who develops diabetes. Studies show that a diabetic pregnant woman’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the baby. This in turn, gives the child a higher inclination of having diabetes or becoming obese. Scientists believe that this exposure to maternal diabetes in the womb accounts for majority of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among the Indians in the past several decades. Thus said, they also are quite optimistic that if they could control a diabetic woman’s blood sugar very closely during pregnancy, the number of children who develop diabetes later on could be decreased.
4. As hard as mother’s try to do everything right during pregnancy there are some things that are out of their hands, such as air pollution. After accidentally coming across the fact that infants are already born with contamination, Frederica Perera decided to further investigate this odd discovery. She found that the polluted air mother’s breathe in can have some major effects on their unborn babies. Some of these effects consist of premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. After studying the amount of air pollution 500 pregnant women were around daily it was found that those exposed to more pollutants had children more likely to have cognitive delays and lower IQ tests than those women who were exposed to fewer pollutants daily.
5. There is some research that shows that women who are under extreme stress or experience starvation during pregnancy are more likely to have children with schizophrenia. Other studies support this idea, especially when the women have been in war situations or famines with little to no food. On top of this scientist are also trying to prove that even pregnant women’s mental state and mood can shape her fetus’ mental stability. This idea is still being tested but it was found, through specific experimenting, that a baby whose mother is depressed or anxious shows disturbances during highly stressful situations the mother is put in, while babies with normal mother’s showed nothing. These findings seem to hold true after birth also, in the few tests they have completed on this topic.

Natalie Reynolds said...

1. The origins of heart disease first began to be studied when the British physician, David Barker, noticed a weird pattern in where the highest rates of heart disease was and investigated it further. After maintaining data on many individuals, he found that small birth size and heart disease in middle age were somewhat related. Small birth size can result from many factors, but it mainly indicates unhealthy prenatal nutrition on the woman’s part. When the fetus is not receiving enough nutrients, it makes sure to first send them to the most important organ, which is the brain. Of course this may result in lack of nutrients to other parts of the body, such as the heart, and this could result in a weakened heart later in life. At first when Barker told others of his findings they didn’t believe him one bit, but over time others began experimenting his theory and after repeating his results they had no choice but to agree with him.
2. In one study researchers from Harvard Medical School found that the more weight a woman gains during pregnancy puts her child at a higher risk for being overweight by the age of 3. In another study they found that the amount of weight gain during pregnancy also can have an effect on the child even up through their teenage years and life. There has also been more research done comparing children born to an obese mother before and after she had weight-loss surgery, which found that the child born before the surgery was 52% more likely than the child born after surgery to be obese. Basically women who are of healthy weight before and during pregnancy are more likely to have average weight babies than those women who are overweight or obese.

Natalie Reynolds said...

3. The article states that through research of the Pima Indians- who have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes in the world- it has been found that genetics may not be the only component in who develops diabetes. Studies show that a diabetic pregnant woman’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the baby. This in turn, gives the child a higher inclination of having diabetes or becoming obese. Scientists believe that this exposure to maternal diabetes in the womb accounts for majority of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among the Indians in the past several decades. Thus said, they also are quite optimistic that if they could control a diabetic woman’s blood sugar very closely during pregnancy, the number of children who develop diabetes later on could be decreased.
4. As hard as mother’s try to do everything right during pregnancy there are just some things that are out of their hands, such as air pollution. After accidentally coming across the fact that infants are already born with contamination, Frederica Perera decided to further investigate this odd discovery. She found that the polluted air mother’s breathe in can have some major effects on their unborn babies. Some of these effects consist of premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations. After studying 500 pregnant women, the amount of air pollution they were around daily, and any problems the infants were born with it was found that those exposed to more pollutants had children more likely to have cognitive delays and lower IQ tests than those women who were exposed to fewer pollutants daily.
5. There is some research that shows that women who are under extreme stress or experience starvation during pregnancy are more likely to have children with schizophrenia. Other studies support this idea, especially when the women have been in war situations or famines with little to no food. On top of this scientist are also trying to prove that even pregnant women’s mental state and mood can shape her fetus’ mental stability. This idea is still being tested but it was found, through specific experimenting, that a baby whose mother is depressed or anxious shows disturbances during highly stressful situations the mother is put in, while babies with normal mother’s showed nothing. These findings seem to hold true after birth also, in the few tests they have completed on this topic.

molly dunlap said...

Molly Dunlap
The article says the origin of heart disease can start in the womb. It says that poor nutrition on the mother’s part can cause the child to have heart disease. This is because all the good nutrients go to the brain first. If there aren’t any other good nutrients left for the other organs then those organs won’t develop as healthy and good. This can cause a problem and be why the child will have heart disease later in life. There is a prenatal impact on obesity. One study shows the greater the mother’s weight gain during pregnancy is, the higher a child has the risk of being over\weight. It says that if a mother lost weight and started eating healthier before the pregnancy, the child has a lesser risk of being overweight. Babies of mothers lost weight before the pregnancy and ate healthier had healthier babies than their siblings who were conceived and given birth to when the mothers were overweight and not healthy. Basically, it says you should eat healthy before and during the pregnancy. In regard to diabetes, a mother’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus and may cause diabetes. Exposure to maternal diabetes increases the risk of the child getting diabetes. Women used to think that if diabetes was in the family the children would probably get it too. Studies show that if women try and keep their blood sugar down, they can lessen the risk of their child getting diabetes. Even just exercising and a healthy diet can lessen the risk of diabetes too. In regard to air pollution, there were samples taken of umbilical cord blood and there were already traces of air pollution in them. Being exposed to air pollution during pregnancy can cause premature birth, low birth weight and heart malformations. Being exposed to air pollution can increase the risk of cancer in the child. They also have a higher risk of being cognitively delayed at age 3. Efforts to reduce environmental toxins have made a huge difference. In relation to mental health, women who have high stress or starvation during pregnancy have a higher risk of having a child with schizophrenia. There was a study that showed babies that were born during the Arab-Israeli-Six-Day-War were more likely to develop schizophrenia. A mother’s psyche seems to affect the baby. Mothers who are depressed and anxious seem to have fetuses who have problems too. The fetuses seem to be more sensitive to stress.

jess tansey said...

1. Around 20 years ago, a physician noticed correlations for high rates of heart disease were off. The countries of poorer areas seemed to have the highest risk. Why? Because of poor prenatal nutrition. A lot of others tried to prove this theory wrong, by claiming that the prenatal environment does not affect the unborn child, its own lifestyle and factors do. People didn’t think that intrauterine experience had anything to do with heart disease- but in fact it almost has everything to do with it. What was found in the study was that he discovered an unexpected link between small birth size — often an indication of poor prenatal nutrition — and heart disease. With an inadequate food supply, the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts of its body — a price that comes decades later in the form of a weakened heart.
2. The prenatal impact on obesity is how much the mother gains while pregnant. Certain studies show that a mother who gained excess weight during pregnancy was more likely to have an overweight child by age 3. Of course, children can be predisposed to obesity or because of unhealthy eating habits. A study was done testing a child born from an obese mother post-surgery. The child was 52% less likely to be obese when compared to children born from women that did not have surgery.
3. There was a study done on Indians since they have the highest rate of type 2 diabetes, and why this is true. It is shown through prenatal experience. During pregnancy, a diabetic woman's high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. If we could intensively control diabetic women's blood sugar during pregnancy," a doctor says, “we could really bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes,” and struggle with it.
4. Premature delivery, low birth weight and heart malformations can be due to exposure to air. A study was done, having pregnant women carry around a backpack of polluted air. 100% of them were exposed to PAH’s- a type of pollutant that comes from vehicle exhaust and is also present in the fumes released by cigarettes and factory smokestacks. After the babies were born, around 40% of them had DNA damage- linking to cancer risk. Further analysis found that those exposed prenatally to high levels of PAHs were more than twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3, scoring lower on an assessment that predicts performance in school; at age 5, these children scored lower on IQ tests than children who received less exposure to PAHs in the womb.
5. The prenatal environment could be linked to mental health because it could be the case that a pregnant woman's emotional state influences her child’s later predisposition to mental illness. It is also known that if a mother has a mental illness, it will greatly be passed on to the child. It seems to be that the intrauterine environment is a pathway by which mental illness is passed down in families. This concept of prenatal environment is pushing us to believe the starting line for becoming who we are is when we are first conceived.

olivia carlsen said...

Olivia Carlsen
1.David Parker realized that there is a correlation between birth weight and heart disease. He conjectured that the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts of its body. This debt comes to affect decades later in the form of a weakened heart. This idea that intrauterine experience has a relationship with heart disease was known as the Barker hypothesis for years. Janet Rich-Edwards tried to disprove this theory but it is one of the most solidly replicated findings in the field of public health.
2.Researchers at Harvard Medical School conducted one study that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy increases the risk that her child would be overweight by age three. The other study indicated that this relationship continues into the child’s adolescence. They have researched mothers who were obese and then received surgery and discovered a few findings from their children. They experienced different intrauterine environments but showed similar eating habits and inherited similar genes as their older siblings. In a later 2006 study though, the younger children were 52% less likely to develop obesity because their mother got the surgery. In 2009, they were found to be three times less likely to become obese. The younger children also process fats and carbohydrates in a healthier way.
3.The article states that during pregnancy, a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Dana Dabelea says that this accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. She has a theory that if we could intensively control diabetic women’s blood sugar during pregnancy then we could bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes.
4.Frederica Perera discovered that air pollution during pregnancy has many birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. In her 1998 study, it revealed that 100% of the women were exposed to PAHs during their pregnancies. After the babies were born, the cord of blood showed that 40% had subtle DNA damage from PAHs. PAHs damages and has been linked to increased cancer risk. Children exposed to high amounts of this have been shown to be cognitively delayed and have a lower IQ test score.
5.Intrauterine conditions influence not only our physical health but also our intelligence, temperament, even our sanity. Evidence indicates that pregnant women that are subjected to starvation and high levels of stress place their child at a higher risk for developing schizophrenia. There are examples of this in many places such as China and Jerusalem. Catherine Monk proposed that pregnant women’s mental state shape her offspring’s psyche. This may in turn affect the child’s development. Fetuses of stressed mothers are already more sensitive to stress. The stress the babies show could be a genetic predisposition inherited from the parents or that the fetuses’ nervous systems are already being shaped by their mothers’ emotional states. This is all deciding when we become who we are.

olivia carlsen said...

Olivia Carlsen PART 1!

1. David Parker realized that there is a correlation between birth weight and heart disease. He conjectured that the fetus diverts nutrients to its most important organ, the brain, while skimping on other parts of its body. This debt comes to affect decades later in the form of a weakened heart. This idea that intrauterine experience has a relationship with heart disease was known as the Barker hypothesis for years. Janet Rich-Edwards tried to disprove this theory but it is one of the most solidly replicated findings in the field of public health.
2. Researchers at Harvard Medical School conducted one study that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy increases the risk that her child would be overweight by age three. The other study indicated that this relationship continues into the child’s adolescence. They have researched mothers who were obese and then received surgery and discovered a few findings from their children. They experienced different intrauterine environments but showed similar eating habits and inherited similar genes as their older siblings. In a later 2006 study though, the younger children were 52% less likely to develop obesity because their mother got the surgery. In 2009, they were found to be three times less likely to become obese. The younger children also process fats and carbohydrates in a healthier way.
3. The article states that during pregnancy, a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar appears to disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus, predisposing it to diabetes and obesity. Dana Dabelea says that this accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes among Pima children over the past 30 years. She has a theory that if we could intensively control diabetic women’s blood sugar during pregnancy then we could bring down the number of children who go on to develop diabetes.

olivia carlsen said...

Olivia Carlsen PART 2!

4. Frederica Perera discovered that air pollution during pregnancy has many birth outcomes, including premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. In her 1998 study, it revealed that 100% of the women were exposed to PAHs during their pregnancies. After the babies were born, the cord of blood showed that 40% had subtle DNA damage from PAHs. PAHs damages and has been linked to increased cancer risk. Children exposed to high amounts of this have been shown to be cognitively delayed and have a lower IQ test score.
5. Intrauterine conditions influence not only our physical health but also our intelligence, temperament, even our sanity. Evidence indicates that pregnant women that are subjected to starvation and high levels of stress place their child at a higher risk for developing schizophrenia. There are examples of this in many places such as China and Jerusalem. Catherine Monk proposed that pregnant women’s mental state shape her offspring’s psyche. This may in turn affect the child’s development. Fetuses of stressed mothers are already more sensitive to stress. The stress the babies show could be a genetic predisposition inherited from the parents or that the fetuses’ nervous systems are already being shaped by their mothers’ emotional states. This is all deciding when we become who we are.

Mikem said...

The origin of heart disease was discovered over two decades ago by a man named David Barker. Barker noticed a correspondence on the map between the poorest regions of Wales and England. England and Wales had the highest rates of heart disease; David Barker speculated this scenario because he believed heart disease was supposed to be a condition of affluence. He then compared thousands of individuals with their birth weight and came across a surprising link between small birth sizes which meant often lack of prenatal nutrition which later leads to heart disease in middle ago. During pregnancy, the fetus sends nutrients to the most important organ which is the brain and disregards other organs such as the heart. Since not enough nutrients were transferred to the heart during pregnancy; later in life the heart suffers because it begins to weaken.

One study found that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy the higher the risk of her child being overweight by the age of three. Women who had excessive when gain during pregnancy compared to those who had moderate weigh gain had a higher chance of having a child that would become obese. On the other hand, children could share eating habits or predisposition to obesity with their mothers. Researchers compared children with mothers that were obese with their siblings born after the mother had antiobesity surgery. The youngest child inherited many of the similar genes their older sibling had such as the same eating habits but the two siblings had alternate intrauterine environments.

The Pima Indians of the Gila River Reservation in Arizona have the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in the world. The science of fetal organs helps give hope to people who believe hereditary has cursed their families to disease. Since 1965, a study has followed a group of Pima Indians proving that disease began from prenatal experience. During pregnancy a woman with diabetes and that has high blood sugar can disrupt the developing metabolism of the fetus. Over the past thirty years exposure to maternal diabetes in the Pima Indians increased the chances of getting type 2 diabetes.

Frederica Perera is the director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University. Over three decades ago she became interested on the effects of pollution on fetuses. In one of her study she used babies just out of the womb as her control but once receiving the results from the samples of the umbilical-cord blood she sent it to the lab to be analyzed where she then realized that there had been a problem ¬; already these babies has signs of pollution contamination. Perera’s next experiment was shocking. She had more than 500 pregnant women carry around black backpacks for two whole days. Each backpack contained and air monitor in which it measure levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. All 500 monitors revealed that they were all exposed to PAH’s during their pregnancies. Further study concluded that fetuses and babies exposed to PAH’s were more than twice as likely to be scoring on assessments that predicts performance in school and at age five these children scored lower on IQ test then children who received less exposure.

A child raised with a parent that has mental illness can increase the risk of the offspring also obtaining a mental illness. Even a pregnant women’s emotional state can be influential to her offspring’s insusceptible mental illness.

ndieschbourg said...

ntil the 1990’s it was thought that heart disease was a conditional of affluence with sedentary lifestyles and rich foods. Then David Barker notice that the highest rate of hearth disease in England and Wales was actually in the poorest regions. He discovered a correlation between small birth size and heart disease. The small birth size is an indication of inadequate food supple, which means the baby does not have enough nutrients. Because of the lack of nutrients the baby focuses the available nutrients on the most important organ, the brain, and deprived other parts of the body, including the heart.
2. The mother’s weight during gestation has an impact on the baby’s weight. One studies conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School said that the greater the woman’s weight gain during pregnancy the higher the risk that her child could be overweight by age 3. Other studies tried to rule out the effects of shared eating habits or genetic predispositions as the cause. Researchers compared children born to obese mothers with their sibling after the mother lost weight. The child born after the weight loss is less likely to be obese. John Karls says this is because they process fats and carbohydrates in a healthier way. He feels if women maintain a healthy weight before and during pregnancy obesity can be stopped before it starts.
3. By studying the Pima Indians who have the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes showed that diabetic women’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the baby. This can predispose them to diabetes and obesity. Researches think this accounts for most of the increase in Type 2 diabetes in the Pima children over the past 30 years. The Indians had blamed genetics for diabetes and thought it was unchangeable. After the researches explain their findings the women were enthusiastic. They felt it was possible to manage their weight for nine months if it meant their babies would be healthy.

ndieschbourg said...

4. Prenatal exposure to air pollution can cause premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. Frederica Perera gave 500 pregnant women all over New York Cities devices for two days that tested the levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a pollutant emitted from cars. He found that 100% of these women were exposed. 40% of their babies had DNA damage from these pollutants. This damage is linked to increase risk of cancer. Exposure makes babies twice as likely to be cognitively delayed by age 3. There has been measure taken to make the air cleaner which has decreased the affects on babies too.
5. The mother’s mental health can affect her unborn baby. Her moods can affect the baby’s development. Researchers tested women who were depressed, anxious, and with normal moods. Their heart rate, blood pressure, and nervous system arousal, and the movement and heart rate of the baby were measured. The women were put in a very stressful situation. Only the women the anxious and depressed women’s babies showed signs of disturbances.

mneal said...

1. According to British psychic an David Barker, heart disease in middle age can be linked to low birth weight. This is because the fetus’s nutrition is only as good as the nutrition of the mother who is carrying it. What little nutrition the baby gets is used on the brain rather than other organs like the heart.
2. Both genes and a mother’s prenatal nutrition influence the prenatal impact on obesity. If an older sibling was conceived while the mother is over weight they will have similar eating habits to a younger sibling born after weight-loss surgery however the younger sibling will process carbohydrates and fats better.
3. Children are also prenatally predisposed to certain disease. This is especially true of Native Americans, who according to a study have the highest rate of gestational diabetes in the world due to the effect of the mother’s lifestyle on the fetus.
4. Mothers who live in big cities also have to worry about the effect of air pollution on the fetus. Traffic pollution especially can be linked to prematurity, low birth weight, and heart malformation, and damage to DNA.
5. Abnormalities in a child’s mental health especially schizophrenia can occur if the mother was subjected to high levels of stress or even starvation during pregnancy.

Shannon Burn said...

1. The article says that heart disease has a prenatal influence. A doctor in the UK saw a higher incidence of heart disease in people in poor areas than in the wealthy. It was believed at the time that heart disease mainly effected the rich people because of they're sedentary lifestyles and rich diets. He investigated and found a link between heart disease in adulthood and low birth weight. He theorized that poor prenatal nutrition caused the developing fetus's body to divert nutrients to the more important organs, like the brain, and neglect the heart.
2. A study found that the greater the mothers weight gain is during gestation, the greater risk that her child will be overweight by age three. Another study found that a child born to an obese mother will be more likely to be overweight that a younger sibling born after the mother has lost weight. The body of a baby born to a mother who isn't obese is better able to process fats and carbohydrates than one born to an obese mother. Epigenetic modification might make the metabolism of the baby function better or worse based on the intrauterine environment. A mother can possibly lower her child's later risk of obesity by altering her own behavior.
3. A study found that during pregnancy high blood sugar can effect the development of metabolism. That can predispose a baby to diabetes and obesity. By monitoring the sugar intake of a pregnant diabetic woman doctors could lower her baby's risk of developing diabetes.
4. Intrauterine exposure to pollutants like PAHs are harmful to the fetus. The PAHs can alter the DNA of the developing fetus. Fetal exposure to PAHs can cause a higher risk of cancer. Also the risk of being cognitively delayed by age three is an effect. Children who had intrauterine exposure to PAHs scored lower on IQ tests than children that did not.
5.The prenatal environment can also effect mental health. A child born to a woman with mental health problems is more likely to have problems. Children who's mothers were subjected to stress or starvation during gestation have a higher risk of schizophrenia. A study of children who's mothers were gestating during the famine from the "Great Leap Forward" found that they were two times as likely to develop schizophrenia than children born at different times. Similar studies done on children of women who gestated during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War found similar results.

Unknown said...

Lauren Hyland
Miss Albanese
Fetal Origins Article
October 28, 2010
1. According to British physician, David Barker, discovered that the origins of heart disease begin during the nine months of pregnancy. He noticed that the poorest regions of England and Wales had the highest rates of heart disease. After investigation, he found the link between heart disease and small birth size, which suggested poor prenatal nutrition. This is because during pregnancy the fetus delivers nutrients to its main organ, the brain, and the rest goes to its other organs, which results in a weakened heart if the mother does not consume enough nutrients. Janet Rich-Edwards tried to disprove this hypothesis, but she too discovered the relationship between heart disease and low birth size.
2. The prenatal impact on obesity suggests that the greater a woman’s weight gain during pregnancy, the higher the risk that her child could be overweight by age 3, which continues into adolescence. The children whose mothers had the most excessive weight gain during pregnancy were more likely to be obese. This was proven with mothers who had anti obesity surgeries after delivering their first born. It was found that the children born after the mother’s surgery were 52% less likely to be obese than their first born sibling. Professor John Kral said that the children born after this surgery were able to process fats and carbohydrates in a healthier way and therefore, their metabolisms were made normal through epigenetic modification.
3. Research now shows that the prenatal experience influences the development of diabetes through the study of the Pima Indians who have the highest rate of type 2 Diabetes in the world. This is because a diabetic woman’s high blood sugar disrupts the developing metabolism of the fetus, which predisposes the child for diabetes and obesity. This accounts for most of the diabetes among the Pima Indians and nationally. Dana Dabelea says that if we could control the mother’s blood sugar during pregnancy, we could decrease the number of children with diabetes. Being able to understand that prenatal experience shapes the diseases we develop also changes behavior. When the Pima Indians were informed about this new finding it offered hope and encouragement for women interested in pregnancy.

Unknown said...

Lauren Hyland
Miss Albanese
Fetal Origins Article
October 28, 2010
4. Frederica Perera studied the effects of air pollution on fetuses to research environmental exposures and cancer in adults. She decided to use babies right out of the womb as her control group but was shocked to find that had already been contaminated. It was found that traffic-related air pollution accounts for premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. A study in which 500 pregnant women went across Manhattan with air monitors in backpacks revealed that 100% of women were exposed to PAHs during pregnancy. The children born showed that 40% had DNA damage from PAHs which is linked to an increase in cancer risk. They were also twice as likely to be cognitively delayed at age 3 and at age 5 scored lower on IQ tests than children who were not as exposed to PAHs during pregnancy.
5. The prenatal environment is now being linked to our intelligence, temperament, and sanity. Pregnant women who experience starvation or extreme stress increased the risk of schizophrenia for their children and those born during the famine were twice more likely to develop schizophrenia than those who were not. Catherine Monk proposed that a mother’s mood during pregnancy affects the child’s development. She studied depressed and anxious pregnant women and compared them to pregnant women with normal moods. The fetuses of the depressed and anxious women were the only ones that displayed disturbances because they are more sensitive to stress. The mother’s heart rate and blood pressure could affect the development of the fetuses’ nervous systems.

ashleybowman said...

Ashley Bowman

1.The article states that heart disease comes from poor nutrition. The fetus has an “inadequate food supply” and redirects the nutrients to the brain and “skimps” on other organs like the heart.

2.The higher the weight of the mother during pregnancy the increased risk that her child will be overweight by age 3. Helping a woman maintain a healthy weight while pregnant is the best hope for stopping obesity before it can start.

3.There is a significant prenatal and genetic component in diabetes. A diabetic woman’s high blood sugar disrupts the metabolism of the developing fetus. This predisposes the child to diabetes and obesity.

4.Air pollution during pregnancy can cause low birth weight, premature delivery, and heart malformations. This pollution can come from cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust, and factory smokestack fumes. A study was conducted with more than 500 pregnant women walked around Manhattan with an air monitor in their backpack. The monitor continuously measured levels of PAH (a type of air pollution).

5.A pregnant woman’s mental state can shape her child’s psyche. There was a test done that put women in what could be stressful, mental exercises. All of the women showed physiological signs of stress in response to the tests, but only the fetuses of depressed, anxious mothers showed their own distress. Fetuses are sensitive to stress. It’s possible that it was inherited, or its possible that the baby’s nervous system is being shaped based on the mother’s stress.

alex kenney said...

Alexandra Kenney October 26,2010
Child Psych


1. Summarize what the article says about the origins of heart disease.
The article presents a new reason for heart disease in adults. Usually, heart disease is caused by “sedentary lifestyles and rich food”, but this article points out that may not be the only main factor causing cardiac disease. David Barker, a British physician, found a relationship between low birth weight and heart disease in middle age years. Small birth size is usually the result of malnutrition of the mother, which in turn leaves the baby with insufficient nutrients. Whatever nutrients they do receive go to the most important organ, which is the brain. Other body organs and parts will not receive enough nutrients necessary; therefore can cause heart disease later on in life. This hypothesis has been named “The Barker Hypothesis”, it has tried to be disproved but his ideas still hold substance and relevance.

2. What is the prenatal impact on obesity?
One fact holds true between the studies in this article regarding obesity: If the mother is obese while pregnant, the child is likely to be obese or overweight. Harvard Medical School said that the more pounds a woman gains, the more likely that her offspring will be overweight by the age of three. A second study also presents the fact that this obesity in the offspring can carry on to later years in life. When researchers compared siblings that were born when the mother was obese and the other sibling when the mother had anti-obesity surgery, they found similar results. The children born when the mother was obese were much more likely to be obese or overweight.

3. What does the article state about the prenatal influence for developing diabetes?
This article states that there is other things that can cause diabetes other than genetics, one of them being prenatal influence. When the mother has high blood sugar during pregnancy, it disrupts the metabolism of the growing fetus. This in turn makes the baby more likely to get diabetes. If mother’s can control their blood sugar while pregnant, it will drastically lower the children who go on to develop diabetes. If mothers are educated they will be likely to control this factor, at least for nine months, to help their baby.

alex kenney said...

ALEX KENNEY CONTINUED

4. Summarize findings about the impact of air pollution.
Frederica Perera, a director of Children’s health at Columbia University, found that fetuses could be exposed to air pollution even before they are born (whatever their mother is exposed to during pregnancy). Traffic related pollution that reaches the fetus can cause low birth weight, premature birth, and heart malformations. Women living in cities are the most exposed to air pollution. A study was done on women living across Manhattan and the upper Bronx, which showed that they were all exposed to PAHs (a pollutant from vehicle exhaust, smoke stacks and cigarette fumes) during their pregnancy. PAH damage may be linked to cancer and lower IQ’s. New York City has switched to newer technology to try to prevent things of this sort from happening so much.


5. How might the prenatal environment be linked to mental health? Explain.
The mother’s mental state has an impact on the fetus in her womb. Women with extreme stress can make their offspring be more likely to develop schizophrenia. When a mother is stress, it can make the baby more sensitive to stress and it will carry on into their later life. Even the mother’s mood can effect the baby. In the article it states that this may occur because the mother’s varying emotional states is shaping the fetuses nervous system. The mother’s stress hormones, temperament affect the baby. Also, if the mother has a mental illness it is likely that her baby will be predisposed to that certain mental illness.

Natalie Pesetsky said...

(1) David Barker believes that a child’s birth weight may be related to heart disease. The intrauterine environment is believed to have short-term and long-term effects on children. Many were skeptical of his hypothesis but, “it’s one of the most solidly replicated findings in the field of public health.” Women must handle countless restrictions to ensure the health of their baby and these findings could very well add to that list. However, scientists mean no harm. Instead, they are excited and interested in the welfare of both mothers and children.

(2) According to research, it is possible that the mother’s weight, during pregnancy, has an effect on the child’s weight before and after birth. When comparing intrauterine environments, according to the article, studies show that "children gestated by women post-surgery were 52% less likely to be obese than siblings born to the same mother when she was still heavy." These studies also suggest that genes and diet is not the only influence. The metabolism of children is also thought to be affected. If factors within the intrauterine environment are proven most profound, then a mother's weight during and after pregnancy could become even more important.

(3) Women who are diabetic generally have a high blood sugar. When pregnant, it can affect the metabolism of the fetus as well. New research suggests that this may predispose these children to diabetes and obesity. If mothers with diabetes have a positive and patient approach, it could mean a lower percentage of diabetes across the nation. For the sake of their children, most women claim that they are willing and able to diet and exercise for 9 months.

(4) Even in a pristine environment, babies show evidence of contamination. Babies exposed to traffic pollution are at risk for a negative birth as well. These include premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. Evidence shows in Perera's study in 1998 that those exposed to cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust, and factory smoke stacks, are at risk for cancer. Even their IQ's may be affected.

(5) It is well known that a parent with a mental illness and genetic predisposition can increase the risk of mental illness in the child. Now it is suggested that these predispositions may also be affected by external factors while in the womb. Studies have shown that women who undergo great stresses like war time and famine are twice as likely to have a child that develops schizophrenia later in life. In a test involving pregnant women with mood disorders, the fetuses displayed disturbances of their own. Studies suggest that fetuses are already more sensitive to stress. It could be a genetic predisposition or an effect of stress hormones produced by the mother.

Natalie Pesetsky said...

(1) David Barker believes that a child’s birth weight may be related to heart disease. The intrauterine environment is believed to have short-term and long-term effects on children. Many were skeptical of his hypothesis but, “it’s one of the most solidly replicated findings in the field of public health.” Women must handle countless restrictions to ensure the health of their baby and these findings could very well add to that list. However, scientists mean no harm. Instead, they are excited and interested in the welfare of both mothers and children.

(2) According to research, it is possible that the mother’s weight, during pregnancy, has an effect on the child’s weight before and after birth. When comparing intrauterine environments, according to the article, studies show that "children gestated by women post-surgery were 52% less likely to be obese than siblings born to the same mother when she was still heavy." These studies also suggest that genes and diet is not the only influence. The metabolism of children is also thought to be affected. If factors within the intrauterine environment are proven most profound, then a mother's weight during and after pregnancy could become even more important.

(3) Women who are diabetic generally have a high blood sugar. When pregnant, it can affect the metabolism of the fetus as well. New research suggests that this may predispose these children to diabetes and obesity. If mothers with diabetes have a positive and patient approach, it could mean a lower percentage of diabetes across the nation. For the sake of their children, most women claim that they are willing and able to diet and exercise for 9 months.

Natalie Pesetsky said...

(4) Even in a pristine environment, babies show evidence of contamination. Babies exposed to traffic pollution are at risk for a negative birth as well. These include premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. Evidence shows in Perera's study in 1998 that those exposed to cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust, and factory smoke stacks, are at risk for cancer. Even their IQ's may be affected.

(5) It is well known that a parent with a mental illness and genetic predisposition can increase the risk of mental illness in the child. Now it is suggested that these predispositions may also be affected by external factors while in the womb. Studies have shown that women who undergo great stresses like war time and famine are twice as likely to have a child that develops schizophrenia later in life. In a test involving pregnant women with mood disorders, the fetuses displayed disturbances of their own. Studies suggest that fetuses are already more sensitive to stress. It could be a genetic predisposition or an effect of stress hormones produced by the mother.

Savannah S said...

1) The origins are heart disease can be traced back to England and Wales, where the highest percentage was recorded. David Barker, a British physician, concluded that there was a relation between low birth weight and adult health. He discovered the link between small birth size and poor prenatal care to heart disease in middle age. His colleagues had always thought heart disease was a result of genetics or adult lifestyle factors, and he presented them with the fact that it also dealt with intrauterine experiences.

2) Obesity studies have proven that not only does obesity deal with genetics and poor habits, but the intrauterine experience and prenatal care as well. Mothers who gained excessive weight during pregnancy were ore likely to give birth to children who would be overweight by age three. Other studies have even shown that the child’s obesity could persist into adolescence. Researchers have even compared children of obese women to formerly obese women who had weight-loss surgeries who had children post surgery. They have found that the mother who is still obese will more likely have the overweight baby compared the baby of the once obese mother.

3) A diabetic mother’s high blood sugar has been shown to affect the baby’s developing metabolism predisposing it to diabetes. In Pima, where the study was performed, most Type 2 diabetes patients were exposed to the diabetes in utero, which seems to be the reason of the increase in childhood diabetes there over the past 30 years. Dr. Dana Dabelea believes that by intensively controlling the diabetic mother’s blood sugar, that the number of children who develop diabetes may decrease. By telling women in her tribe what she thinks, their attitude had become more positive about pregnancy, they learned they may be able to control if their child develops the diabetes.

4) The impact of air pollution to a baby hosts a variety of outcomes. Being exposed to traffic related air pollution in utero could cause premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. After a Manhattan study by Dr. Perera, she found 40% of babies exposed to the pollution had subtle DNA damage that may potentially put them at a greater risk to cancer. Further analysis found that the children exposed were also more likely to be cognately delayed by age three, proven by lower scores on assessment tests used to predict performance in school. Even at age 5, the children had lower IQs then the other who had less pollution exposure in the womb. Air pollution used to worry the elderly and those with asthma, and studies have proven that expectant mothers need to watch out for pollution as well.

5) Scientists are also now exploring prenatal influences on mental health, studying not only the effects on physical health but on intelligence, temperament, and sanity. Even evidence can show pregnant women who are more subject to starvation or extreme stress are more likely to give birth to a schizophrenic child. In past years, during country’s famines, there was an increase in schizophrenic children given birth by the starved mothers. Studies have shown mothers who are exposed to extreme stress, depression, or anxiousness can be predicted to have children who are also sensitive to stress, tracing back to their prenatal environment. The fetuses’ nervous systems may already be being altered by their mother’s emotional states.



It's late, but hopefully it can be worth something.

Savannah S said...

1) The origins are heart disease can be traced back to England and Wales, where the highest percentage was recorded. David Barker, a British physician, concluded that there was a relation between low birth weight and adult health. He discovered the link between small birth size and poor prenatal care to heart disease in middle age. His colleagues had always thought heart disease was a result of genetics or adult lifestyle factors, and he presented them with the fact that it also dealt with intrauterine experiences.

2) Obesity studies have proven that not only does obesity deal with genetics and poor habits, but the intrauterine experience and prenatal care as well. Mothers who gained excessive weight during pregnancy were ore likely to give birth to children who would be overweight by age three. Other studies have even shown that the child’s obesity could persist into adolescence. Researchers have even compared children of obese women to formerly obese women who had weight-loss surgeries who had children post surgery. They have found that the mother who is still obese will more likely have the overweight baby compared the baby of the once obese mother.

3) A diabetic mother’s high blood sugar has been shown to affect the baby’s developing metabolism predisposing it to diabetes. In Pima, where the study was performed, most Type 2 diabetes patients were exposed to the diabetes in utero, which seems to be the reason of the increase in childhood diabetes there over the past 30 years. Dr. Dana Dabelea believes that by intensively controlling the diabetic mother’s blood sugar, that the number of children who develop diabetes may decrease. By telling women in her tribe what she thinks, their attitude had become more positive about pregnancy, they learned they may be able to control if their child develops the diabetes.

4) The impact of air pollution to a baby hosts a variety of outcomes. Being exposed to traffic related air pollution in utero could cause premature delivery, low birth weight, and heart malformations. After a Manhattan study by Dr. Perera, she found 40% of babies exposed to the pollution had subtle DNA damage that may potentially put them at a greater risk to cancer. Further analysis found that the children exposed were also more likely to be cognately delayed by age three, proven by lower scores on assessment tests used to predict performance in school. Even at age 5, the children had lower IQs then the other who had less pollution exposure in the womb. Air pollution used to worry the elderly and those with asthma, and studies have proven that expectant mothers need to watch out for pollution as well.

5) Scientists are also now exploring prenatal influences on mental health, studying not only the effects on physical health but on intelligence, temperament, and sanity. Even evidence can show pregnant women who are more subject to starvation or extreme stress are more likely to give birth to a schizophrenic child. In past years, during country’s famines, there was an increase in schizophrenic children given birth by the starved mothers. Studies have shown mothers who are exposed to extreme stress, depression, or anxiousness can be predicted to have children who are also sensitive to stress, tracing back to their prenatal environment. The fetuses’ nervous systems may already be being altered by their mother’s emotional states.

it's late but hopefully it can be worth something.

Allie CItro said...

1. Everyone thought that heart disease was only associated with heredity, genetics and adult lifestyles. Then Barker found out that there was a correlation between smaller babies, and inadequate food supplies. Not many people agreed with his new findings but he presented the evidence and then they believed him. It was known as the Barker hypothesis and a woman was set out to disprove the hypothesis. Yet all she found were the same results. She said, "Similar studies have been conducted at least two dozen times since then," she notes. "It's one of the most solidly replicated findings in the field of public health." So basically if a woman continues having a healthy weight, the baby will to and that eliminates most risk of cardiovascular disease risk.
2. It was said that the higher the obesity in a pregnant woman, the more overweight the baby would be by age three. There were studies with teenagers who only had moderate gain weight during pregnancy and middle-aged women during pregnancy and the babies were more obese for the older heavier women. There was another test where the mothers would have there kids when they were heavier, then when they lost weight they would have another baby, at this observation, the kid would have different eating habits and would tend to be smaller than the siblings of the mother when she was heavier.
3. They cannot control the diabetic pregnant woman’s blood sugar as much as they would like too, so the baby can be exposed to diabetes too! If they could control the blood sugar, it is said that they could bring down the numbers of the children who go on to developing diabetes. Woman can change their ways during the pregnancy though and that can lower the risk for the children to possibly go on to develop diabetes. They can diet, and exercise, that way the cycle of diabetes can possibly be broken.
4. The impact of air is a big deal. There was a test done on some babies, they took tissue of the placenta and umbilical cord and it was shown that it was contaminated already! When the baby was born, it was sometimes premature, low birth-weight, and heart malformations! To continue research, they measured levels of PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. 100% ended up with PAHs, and 40% ended up with DNA damage. So because of this, pollutants have been encountering stopping points due to us stopping certain rules to keep the air cleaner.
5. Stress is a mental issue that affects the baby. Some woman eat a lot when they are stressed, with can make the baby obese, and some woman starve themselves when they are stressed, which can cause harm to the baby or even a miscarriage. If they have the stress, and the baby is born, it can be induced to a higher risk of schizophrenia. When women are upset or under pressure, there blood pressure can be raised, the heart-rate and many bad things like that can effect the baby as well. Fetuses’ are already sensitive to stress to begin with so extra stress is not god at all for the baby.

Leann Hendron said...

1. The article says that heart disease does not just come from genetics and your lifestyle but it comes from your nutrition in the womb. David Barker found a connection between heart disease and low birth weight. Low birth weight can come from lack of nutrients sent to the baby. The nutrients go to the brain and not many go to any other body parts and that can result in a weak heart later on in life. There is a poor supply of nutrients going everywhere else because the fetus turns them away, and that is when they go to the brain.

2. The prenatal impact that can lead to obesity is that the more weight the mother gains during pregnancy, the higher the chances are of her child to become overweight by age three. They know that prenatal environment is not the only reason for obesity, but they are trying to figure out if there are any other connections.

3. The article states that there are not many known prenatal influences for developing diabetes. One that they have discovered though is that a woman’s blood sugar while pregnant disrupts the metabolism that the fetus is developing. With this happening, the baby is exposed to diabetes and obesity. They are looking for ways to make simple changes during pregnancy to reduce the risk Diabetes. It can be without a doubt genetic, but this is just another way that people should be aware of how it can be developed.

4. Air pollution has an impact on everyone, including pregnant women. Due to air pollution a mother’s baby may be born premature, have a low birth weight or even have heart problems. Traffic air pollution is a big type of pollution that is harmful. They are trying to find ways to reduce the amount of pollution coming from diesel trucks and busses. There is also a cancer risk from all the air pollution for the mother and the baby.

5. The article states that prenatal environment may be linked to mental health, which includes our intelligence, temperament and sanity. An example given is that if a pregnant mother is under extreme stress, is at risk of starvation their child has a higher chance of schizophrenia. A fetus may be shaped my the mothers emotional state. Their heart rate and blood pressure all have an effect on the baby. Their emotional state while pregnant may also increase a mental illness for the child later on in life.