The Better Baby Book (20 page)

If you've ever taken statin drugs for cholesterol, we believe it's imperative to supplement with coQ10 from preconception through lactation. It's well documented that statin drugs quickly use up the body's coQ10 supply.

Liposomal Glutathione

Glutathione is one of the most powerful antioxidants. It's a tripeptide (a group of three amino acids) formed from L-cysteine, L-glutamic acid, and glycine. The liver uses glutathione to deal with toxins all the time. Glutathione protects cells from free radicals and other cell-damaging reactive molecules, including those found in acrylonitrile, a common plasticizer and auto exhaust toxin found in the air. It also helps to detoxify air pollution, alcohol, antipsychotic and antiepileptic drugs, cigarette smoke, heavy metals, hyperoxia (excess oxygen in the blood), mycotoxins, pesticides, radiation, thalidomide, and the estrogenic chemical vinyl chloride found in a wide variety of PVC plastics. Like coQ10, glutathione reactivates used vitamins C and E.

Glutathione is a powerful force in maintaining a mother's body as an ideal, safe environment for her fetus. Like coQ10, glutathione is highly concentrated in the placenta, so taking plenty before conception and during the first trimester could help to prevent birth defects. In the placenta, glutathione neutralizes toxins and pollutants before they ever reach the fetus. It also increases fertility, especially in men.

We each took a teaspoon of liposomal (fat-encapsulated) glutathione every day for six months before Lana got pregnant. When you supplement with glutathione, it's important to buy liposomal glutathione. It is manufactured in such a way that the glutathione molecules are wrapped in healthy fats. These fats escort the glutathione right into the cells, making it far more useful to the body than nonliposomal glutathione supplements. In cell culture studies, liposomal glutathione has been shown to be a hundred times more effective than regular reduced glutathione.

You can also raise the glutathione level in the body by taking glutathione precursors. Two of these, N-acetyl-cysteine and selenium, were recently shown to improve fertility in men. We did everything we could to make sure that Dave's sperm had normal structure and form, so he took the precursors as well as fully formed liposomal glutathione. The most effective brands are at
www.betterbabybook.com/antioxidants
.

8

Hormones and Pharmaceuticals

Thanks to cutting-edge science, there are a few things you can do to enhance your unborn baby's growth and development that go beyond epigenetics. This chapter is about supplementing with the hormone progesterone and potential improvements in baby health and intelligence that could come from two pharmaceutical drugs.

The idea of using pharmaceuticals to create healthier babies is controversial. There are huge ethical questions. Will we grow into a society where everyone has to take pharmaceuticals to have kids who can “keep up”? Should we use pharmaceuticals that increase intelligence but cause a small increase in birth defects?

We're uncomfortable with these questions, but we also believe that this book wouldn't be complete without touching on the most promising substances with near zero risk. You should not use any pharmaceutical during pregnancy without your doctor's help. This is not an area for self-experimentation.

Since Lana is a doctor and we both know a great deal about how bodies work, we knew that using some of these substances would be safe even if they didn't enhance the health of our children. The benefits of progesterone on Lana were quite obvious (no morning sickness, vibrant skin, stable moods). Based on the research in this chapter, we believe it probably also helped our children to maximize their potential. In any case, we don't suggest experimenting on your own without first consulting a holistic doctor.

Progesterone

We can thank Katharina Dalton, a London-based physician who defined the term PMS in the 1950s, for the first research on the effects of progesterone use during pregnancy. In the 1960s, she found that children born to mothers who used progesterone were more advanced in development at one year old and performed better academically at ages nine and ten than their peers did. Dalton reported that children whose mothers received more than five grams of prenatal progesterone performed best academically and were more likely to go to college. These “progesterone babies,” as she called them, became famous after her study. Although she didn't believe progesterone would produce a race of geniuses, she thought it would ensure full brain development.

Dalton's methods were later questioned in 1978 when studies led by Anthony Lynch at the Department of Psychology, University of Keele, in Staffordshire England, contradicted her conclusion. In addition, a 2006 study concluded that not enough is known about progesterone to be sure it's safe to use during pregnancy. We took this into consideration, but after talking with other antiaging and endocrine experts, we decided that using an appropriate amount of bioidentical progesterone during pregnancy to offset the artificially high estrogen in our environment would produce positive results.

Progesterone facilitates optimal brain development. It helps to prevent preterm delivery, which promotes more complete fetal development. It protects the neurons of a fetus by suppressing the excitation that is capable of damaging fragile new brain tissue. Progesterone has also been shown to heal injured brain tissue in adults. It decreases stress and increases a feeling of well-being in the mother, producing calmer babies. From the perspective of epigenetics, a lower stress level in the mother would certainly help to sustain growth programs in her baby. We don't know whether progesterone leads to an increase in intelligence, but we were happy to enjoy the protective benefits.

We also believe that progesterone use can prevent stretch marks, since too little progesterone and too much estrogen contribute to their formation. Although this isn't proven, Lana didn't develop any stretch marks through two pregnancies while using progesterone. Vitamin C may have played a role there, too.

Beware of Synthetic Progesterone

In any kind of hormone replacement therapy, it's very important to use bioidentical products.
Bioidentical
means that a substance, though created in a lab, is identical to the substance found in nature. Bioidentical progesterone is the exact same type of progesterone that's found in your body, and it's the only progesterone that works. At the time that Dalton did her studies in the late 1960s, bioidentical progesterone was used.

What other progesterone exists? Since pharmaceutical companies cannot legally patent progesterone itself, they tweak the molecule a bit and then market it as an effective progesterone supplement that they can sell for expensive prices. Many doctors do not understand the difference between these impostor drugs and real progesterone, so it's critical to make sure you know this information.

Depo-Provera is a synthetic form of progesterone that has a different effect inside the body. It's largely similar to bioidentical progesterone, but it is slightly altered (presumably so it could be patented). Depo-Provera is so damaging to the female reproductive system that it's used as a form of birth control. It interferes with hormone signaling to prevent eggs from being released from the ovaries. This happens because Depo-Provera binds more strongly to the part of cells where progesterone binds than natural progesterone does, while not conferring the same benefits on mother and baby that real progesterone does. David Zava, a biochemist at ZRT Laboratory in Beaverton, Oregon, explains that progesterone is a “master key” that unlocks a number of bodily functions. Although Depo-Provera does shut down the ovaries effectively, it doesn't calm the nervous system or stabilize the cardiovascular system as bioidentical progesterone does. Depo-Provera is also rife with harmful side effects, because it blocks a woman's body from using its own natural supply of progesterone. Using bioidentical progesterone certainly won't prevent pregnancy, as Depo-Provera does.

In
What Your Doctor May Not Tell You about Menopause: The Breakthrough Book on Natural Hormone Balance
, Dr. John Lee points out that Depo-Provera causes a “terrible incidence of side effects.” Women often feel terrible when using it. The 1993
Physician's Desk Reference
states that Depo-Provera can contribute to heart and limb defects in a fetus if it is used during the first four months of pregnancy. The use of synthetic progesterone during pregnancy has also been shown to measurably alter personality in the fetus and restrict circulation. Depo-Provera is a hormone disrupter that's about as dangerous as the mycotoxins we describe elsewhere in this book. Don't ever use it, and always be wary of hormone replacements that aren't bioidentical.

Getting Started with Progesterone

If you choose to use bioidentical progesterone during pregnancy, we recommend getting a full hormone analysis first and working with a holistic antiaging doctor to optimize your levels. For any hormone, getting the dosage correct is critical—if you don't, adverse side effects can result.

Hormones usually aren't taken orally because the liver and digestive system will filter most of them out for excretion. Using a cream that soaks into the skin is an effective way to bypass the liver and get progesterone into the body, but the cream often results in a high progesterone level. This is because over time the progesterone is stored in high quantities in fatty skin tissue instead of being used or excreted. We've found that the best way to use progesterone is in the form that dissolves under the tongue and flows directly into the bloodstream. It's much more difficult to overdose with the sublingual form, and it doesn't build up in your body the way the cream can.

Deprenyl

Deprenyl is a pharmaceutical substance that has been proven to reduce the age-related decline of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It increases dopamine availability throughout the brain, thereby preserving youthful brain function. Dopamine plays a key role in a variety of brain functions, including behavior, cognition, voluntary movement, motivation, fear, sleep, mood, attention, working memory, and learning. It's usually associated with the brain's reward system, so it also plays a key role in a person's experience of happiness. Besides increasing dopamine, Deprenyl has been found to promote optimal levels of other key neurotransmitters, like serotonin, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

Deprenyl was originally developed as a mental energizer with antidepressant effects. It may even be able to extend the life span by slowing the death rate of nigral neurons, a tiny group of nerves that are essential for dopamine synthesis and function. After about age forty-five, the nigral neurons die off at a rate of about 13 percent per decade, reducing a person's vigor, life force, and the intensity of their life experience. This means that even if a person reached age 115 in perfect health, they're still likely to die due to a shortage of nigral neurons. Studies on rats and dogs have shown Deprenyl to be a powerful life-extension agent. In the United States, Deprenyl is now used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. It's also been shown to increase sexual function and desire and to help with senile dementia, learning disorders, and a host of other ailments. In other words, when used at lower antiaging doses, Deprenyl is an amazing drug.

There is a case for using very small doses of Deprenyl during pregnancy for several reasons. It's been shown to protect nerve cells from a number of neurotoxins by strengthening neuronal membranes. It's safe—in a 2008 study on the effects of Deprenyl during pregnancy, it was found to have no detrimental effects on rat embryo development, even when used in doses much higher than those prescribed for humans. Not only did Deprenyl cause no harm, the study concluded that overall Deprenyl actually enhanced embryonic quality. It may even improve intelligence, by stimulating more neural connections. We've experienced sharper brain function ourselves while using Deprenyl.

Deprenyl comes in several forms and is sold under a few different names. There are patches, tablets, and a liquid. We recommend the liquid, which is called liquid Deprenyl citrate (LDC). LDC is the purest form of Deprenyl available. Deprenyl is sold as Selegiline, Jumex, Selepryl, Eldepryl, and Cyprenil. For the neuroprotective and neuroenhancing qualities, a
very
low dose of two milligrams per day is enough, and only during the second and third trimester. That is approximately 5 percent of the normal pharmaceutical dosage.

When Deprenyl is taken in such small doses well into pregnancy, though, we believe that the neuroprotective benefits outweigh whatever risks there may be.

Before using a pharmaceutical drug like Deprenyl during pregnancy, you must consult with an antiaging or holistic physician familiar with very small doses of Deprenyl. Deprenyl is a prescription drug, so you'll need to work with a physician who's willing to prescribe it for use during pregnancy. Pregnancy is not an accepted use for Deprenyl, despite this research, so you may not be able to find a physician willing to prescribe it. For the health of our children, this is something in our medical system that ought to change. We would have liked to have had a prescription for Deprenyl for use during both pregnancies.

Oxiracetam

Oxiracetam is a nontoxic, water-soluble drug that has been proven to increase brain performance. It was originally developed by the Italian pharmaceutical company ICF. A member of the racetam family of brain-enhancing drugs, oxiracetam is a more potent, more effective version of piracetam, the original racetam.

Oxiracetam has demonstrated lots of benefits while showing no detectable adverse side effects, even when taken in very large doses. Although it does not affect cerebral blood flow, it increases brain concentrations of the cellular energy source adenosine triphosphate. Scores of studies have demonstrated that oxiracetam increases brainpower. A 1986 study showed that oxiracetam enhanced vigilance in elderly people with dementia.

In 1988, Italian researchers tested oxiracetam on pregnant mice to see if it caused birth defects. No birth defects whatsoever were observed, and the one-month-old pups of the mother mice given oxiracetam were more curious than their peers. At three months old, the pups demonstrated significantly better performance on memory tests. A 1989 study of 272 people with dementia showed that oxiracetam improved their concentration and memory. In animal testing, oxiracetam has been shown to reduce the negative effects of harmful exposure to microwaves.

We used oxiracetam during pregnancy for two reasons. First, it protects brain cells in the event of low oxygen, which lowers the risk of oxygen-related brain damage in the womb. Second, we were familiar with its benefits and wanted to pass along the benefits of higher brain ATP to our children. Oxiracetam has been proven to be exceptionally safe even in large doses. Although we can't quantify the benefits, we are certain that oxiracetam was safer to take than even Tylenol.

There are stronger racetam drugs available, like aniracetam, but these are usually oil-soluble. We therefore don't recommend using them—or other oil-soluble pharmaceuticals—during pregnancy for the reason of potential toxicity. If the body needs to eliminate a substance, water-soluble substances are far easier to eliminate than oil-soluble substances.

Oxiracetam has been sold in Italy since 1988. It can be found under the names CT-848, hydroxy-piracetam, ISF-2522, Neuractiv, and Neuromet. In the United States, oxiracetam is pending FDA approval for use in treating Alzheimer's disease. You'll probably need to work with a doctor to get oxiracetam.

A Warning about Pharmaceuticals

We chose to use some of these pharmaceutical drugs because we very much understood what they could do for our babies and our own bodies at the molecular level. We exhaustively researched the risks until we were certain they were near zero, and we were very conservative with our dose. As a physician, Lana was able to determine the appropriate dosages. Even then, we got second opinions from other experts. We believe that these pharmaceutical drugs are safe and effective and actually lower pregnancy risk.

With our current legal system, no pharmaceutical company will ever market a drug that makes for healthier, smarter babies. The liability is too high no matter how compelling the research may be. We hope that by discussing these pharmaceuticals here, we can bring to light some of the potential for health and wellness in our children.