The Better Baby Book (3 page)

Here's where epigenetics comes in. Think of the DNA double helix as encased in a “sleeve” of regulatory proteins, and if that sleeve allows RNA through to read the genes, those genes will be turned on. If the sleeve of regulatory proteins blocks RNA from reading the genes, those genes will be turned off. Since the environment has a large say in how the sleeve is configured, it also influences which genes RNA can get through to read.

Many different signals from the environment affect the regulatory sleeve. These signals can be chemical or electromagnetic, they can come from inside the body or outside it, and they can come from our emotions. For example, many genes in the human body are turned on or off by a person's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. These genes have a profound effect on immune function and resistance to disease. They can be activated in as little as three seconds. Holistic doctor Deepak Chopra recently publicized a study showing that a short period of meditation directly affected the expression of more than five hundred genes.

The environment controls which genes RNA can replicate (conceptual model only).

Unfortunately, epigenetic effects don't always make things better. Sometimes they promote genetic programs for defense instead of genetic programs for growth. Poor habits on the part of mothers and fathers can turn on harmful genes, which are then passed on to the children. This can occur, for example, if the parents are overweight. A 2010 study at Boston's Children Hospital found that children of overweight mothers were more prone to being overweight than children of mothers with average body mass index. The older the children got, the more overweight they became.

Another example is undernourishment. If a parent is malnourished, disorders can develop that sometimes affect not just his or her children but also her children's children and beyond. Thus, a Dutch famine at the end of World War II led to higher schizophrenia rates in later generations. In the United States, researchers blame malnourishment in Southern women during the Civil War for the unusually high incidence of stroke that persisted among their descendants for several generations.

Epigenetic factors have a greater influence in the womb than at any other time in a person's life. Such factors, which include the mother's diet, environment, stress level, and emotions, can send various kinds of signals to the protein sleeve surrounding an unborn baby's DNA. Some of these signals are helpful and some are harmful, and they have a tremendous effect right after fertilization. They don't change your baby's genetic makeup, but they do (at least in part) determine which of the genes in a baby's DNA sequence will become functional. This is why we emphasize creating good health in the mother (and the father) even before conception.

To see epigenetics in action, we can look at the results of a famous Duke University study, published in
Molecular and Cellular Biology
in 2003. In this study, specially bred mice that were bright yellow and genetically susceptible to obesity, diabetes, and cancer were fed certain vitamins before and during conception and pregnancy. The resulting baby mice were healthy, natural brown-colored mice with no tendency toward obesity or disease. The vitamins and supplements given to the mother mice suppressed the bad genes that would have caused the yellow color and all the associated disease susceptibilities in their offspring.

The vitamins given to the mice included choline, trimethylglycine, folic acid, and vitamin B12—all are what are called
methyl donors
. Methyl donors can change the sleeve of proteins around the DNA in a recently fertilized egg, causing RNA to read DNA differently and have a big effect on which genes will be expressed. That's why we focus not just on food but also on prenatal supplements, and it's why we stress the importance of trying to conceive when the mother's body is optimally nourished and healthy.

Ideally, parents should also choose to conceive when the mother is not under a lot of stress. If certain stress hormones like cortisol are present in high quantities or are elevated for long periods, it can cause the body to go into the defense mode we discussed earlier. This helps cells to respond to threats more quickly, but it uses energy the body needs for other processes. Remember we said that functioning in defense mode always comes at a cost? In the long run, this faster response and higher energy use wears cells out.

In contrast, physical exercise, yoga, meditation, and prayer are all known to reset cell activity, slowing it down to its normal, more sustainable pace. Breathing exercises, relaxation training, meditation and other mindfulness techniques, good relationships with family and friends, group support, and even a healthy expression of aggression have the same reset effect. This is why they promote health and longevity. There's a good biological reason behind the advice to “take a deep breath” when you're upset—you're actually slowing your cells down and helping them to return to growth mode.

What happens in the womb isn't the only thing that has an effect on gene expression. Studies have shown that a mother's (and presumably a father's) touch and nurturing after birth can cause different genes to be turned on or off. An experiment was done with rats in which the pups of calm mothers were swapped with pups from anxious mothers, each mother raising the other's pups. The pups from anxious mothers were genetically predisposed to anxiety. The calm mothers, who licked and groomed the pups, were much better nurturers than the anxious mothers, who paid little attention to the pups. The amazing result was that the anxious pups became calm under the care of the calm mother rats. The pups' cognitive test results showed that they were more curious and that they explored new environments with less fear and hesitation. The scientists performing the experiment noted that the calm mothers' behavior caused permanent changes in the way the anxious pups' genes were translated. Based on this and other studies, there is ample evidence that a wide range of social interactions affects gene translation, especially during critical childhood development phases.

If gene translation can change after birth, imagine the power of this effect in the womb, during the most critical stages of development!

In
The Prenatal Prescription: A State-of-the-Art Program for Optimal Prenatal Care
, Peter Nathanielsz, a Cambridge University–educated doctor and expert in fetal development, gives an excellent practical example of epigenetics at work. He tells a story about two brothers.

The first brother, James, was born on a warm Southern California evening at a low-stress time in his parents' lives, when things were going well for them. Later, the father, Michael, was injured, became disabled, and lost his job as an engineer. The family moved back to its original home in Pittsburgh to be near family and old friends. The mother, Alice, kept food on the table by working at a large commercial laundry. This was a stressful environment full of noise and chemicals, and she worked there six days a week, including during her pregnancy with her second son, William, until the very day she went into labor.

James and William both grew up eating a diet typical of the Pittsburgh area: high in starch, sugar, carbohydrates, and unhealthy fats and low in proteins, healthy fats, and fresh vegetables—the same diet that causes so many health problems today. Nonetheless, James enjoyed good health, whereas William was diagnosed with high blood pressure at forty years old, contracted diabetes at fifty, and died of a stroke in his early sixties. James lived well into his eighties as a healthy man before dying of old age. The different womb environments that James and William were exposed to during critical stages of fetal development affected their whole lives.

According to Nathanielsz, how we leave the world is mostly determined by how we enter it. What happens in the womb environment can largely predict your baby's cardiovascular health, eating patterns, tendency to gain weight, emotional resilience, intelligence, susceptibility to cancer, resistance to infection, and even blood pressure. The blood pressure of women during pregnancy has been shown to correlate directly with the blood pressure of their children in adulthood.

More on Growth Mode and Defense Mode

The cells in our bodies work together in systems at least as complex as human society. Cells continuously communicate with one another, signaling other cells to either increase or decrease activity for the common good of the whole body.

If the cells of a baby in the womb face a shortage of oxygen or nutrients, they may be forced to allocate their limited resources in ways that can affect the health of that baby after birth and throughout life. This would be analogous to a farmer who harvests the corn crop and uses all of it to feed the family during a winter of severe food shortages. This helps the family to survive the winter, but afterward there is no corn to sow, and the next winter is likely to be much harder.

Similarly, if adverse conditions in the womb force a fetus to focus on short-term survival, it may have to forgo what is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for optimal development. For example, if there are inadequate supplies of nutrients or oxygen, a fetus will devote more of its resources to brain development, a shift that may come at the expense of other organs and tissues, which will no longer have an opportunity to grow properly.

The circulatory system is one of the possible victims of the shortage of resources in defense mode. If this system doesn't develop properly, there will be too few blood vessels supplying one or more of the baby's organs. A diminished blood supply means that these organs will receive less oxygen and nutrients throughout life and may not perform as efficiently as they should.

Another possible result of being in prolonged defense mode is an underdeveloped liver or digestive system. While a baby is in the womb, the mother performs all digestive and detoxifying (liver) functions for the fetus. Since these systems aren't used in utero, most fetuses give them the lowest priority if environmental factors have caused a shift into defense mode and a consequent rationing of resources. The result is that these organs may not have a chance to develop normally, eventually causing problems that cannot be reversed. No known food or supplement given to the baby after birth will be able to change the structure of an underdeveloped liver. This is why keeping your baby in growth mode and out of defense mode is so critical.

Just as babies in the womb respond to how much oxygen and nutrients cross the placenta, they are also sensitive to their mothers' stress levels, which are signaled by changes in heart rhythm, blood pressure, and sounds, as well as by certain hormones like cortisol that cross the placenta. If there are heavy loads of cortisol over a prolonged period, the message to the baby is that the outside world is a dangerous place, and the baby's whole body may enter defense mode and not develop as it should. This underdevelopment sometimes comes with lifelong effects.

Many people have heard the old saying “You are what you eat.” Epigenetics shows us that you are also what you breathe, feel, and think, and these factors have a profound effect on your children, too. Epigenetics is groundbreaking because it proves once and for all that we as parents have more control over the health of our unborn children than we ever dreamed possible. The knowledge that we have this control brings with it an obligation to use that opportunity to pave the way for maximal good health in our children—starting even before conception, if possible.

2

Road Map to a Healthy Pregnancy

This chapter provides a brief overview of our program so you know what's coming and how it fits into the big picture. It is organized according to the four pillars we discussed in chapter 1 (eat right, take the right supplements, detoxify your body, and minimize stress). Although we cover many subtopics as the book progresses, you'll find it helpful to keep these four pillars in mind.

Eat the Right Foods

We make powerful dietary recommendations in chapters 4 and 5 about what to eat and what not to eat. Our recommendations, which will provide your baby with all the nutrients he or she needs to grow, are backed by the most recent epigenetic science and offer protection from toxic foods. These are the same dietary recommendations that led Lana to have no morning sickness or cravings during pregnancy, even though she was in her forties when we had our children. From a fertility standpoint, our diet enabled Lana to have two healthy babies, the second at forty-two years of age. We also share tips on how to cook food to make it healthier.

We spent time learning how to make healthy food delicious, because if food doesn't taste good, look good, smell good, and feel good, you can be sure that most pregnant women won't eat it. Many of our recipes are available online at
www.betterbabybook.com
.

Take the Right Supplements

We found that a shocking number of mothers—more than fifty million worldwide—have children with cognitive problems because of a lack of basic vitamins. For instance, if a mother is iodine deficient during pregnancy, her baby's brain will not develop the best it can. Since a deficiency in iodine causes poor cognitive performance in babies, it's critical that mothers have enough iodine to avoid the problem. But “good enough” wasn't our goal—we wanted the best possible results.

Our supplements chapters will show you exactly how we not only avoided cognitive dysfunction in our children but also maximized their cognitive abilities. We spent hundreds of hours researching what works and what is safe. We found dozens of nutritional deficiencies that affect fetal development, and we realized that it was important to support our diet with nutritional supplements, including vitamins, minerals, and food isolates, as well as a few carefully selected pharmaceutical drugs.

We explain many details and fine points about supplementation, including the fact that it's sometimes key to take very specific forms of certain supplements if they're to be useful and healthy. We also found that standard supplementation with prenatal vitamins (and maybe some folic acid) is woefully inadequate, and we even discovered toxins in many prenatal vitamin products. You'll find everything about the supplements and drugs we used in chapters 7 and 8. If the only thing you remember from this book is that one-a-day prenatals are not enough, you'll have improved your chances of a healthy, optimal pregnancy.

Detoxify Your Body before, during, and after Pregnancy

It seems cliché to say that you need to detoxify your body. Detoxing has all the connotations of the Betty Ford Center, and the word is now so overused that average people don't seem to know what detoxing is and what it isn't. Some companies sell a pill that they claim will detox you.

Lana's experience as a physician helped her to understand how toxins affect the body, but it was Dave's expertise in nutritional approaches to health that really enabled us to focus our research on toxins, gaining an understanding of how toxins get into our bodies, where they hide, and how to remove them. There are many little-known ways that our bodies even make their
own
toxins, which cause adverse effects in fetal development. We were also able to link certain toxins with specific symptoms in babies and mothers. Much of what we reveal on this topic is unheard of in most doctors' offices.

Perhaps our most surprising topic is a class of toxins called
mycotoxins
that are produced by molds and are common in human and animal food supplies. Mycotoxins are so toxic to animal embryos that farmers actually test animal feed before giving it to pregnant animals. Many of these toxins closely resemble the primary female hormone estrogen, so they confuse the mother's and the baby's estrogen receptors, leading to early (precocious) puberty in young girls, impaired fertility in mothers, and low sperm count and shrunken testes in boys and men. Since they're hormone disrupters, these toxins have an effect at very low concentrations, even those measured in parts per billion. There are no government standards or tests required for some of these toxins, and we believe there is evidence that the current levels of them that are legally permitted in processed foods is far too high for pregnant women to be eating.

We will teach you how to spot foods that contain toxins so you can avoid them. We'll teach you how and why to keep your environment as free of toxins as possible, and we'll share the detoxification methods we developed for ourselves and our children. We'll also explain why it's important to spend time and money ensuring that you're free of low-level undiagnosed pathogenic diseases (like Lyme) before becoming pregnant.

Keeping toxins and other intruders away from your baby is vital to telling your baby that it's okay to maintain growth mode. Your own health is likely to improve dramatically, your fertility will skyrocket, and your baby will be free to grow uninhibited. See chapters 9 through 13 for all of the details.

Minimize Stress

Minimizing stress involves thinking positively and managing your emotions. The topic of emotions and stress is something many of us don't pay much attention to, but it's essential for a healthy pregnancy. That's why we'll spend extra time introducing emotions and stress right here, early in the book. As you read on, don't become dismayed that you must reduce stress and get your emotions in order right away, especially if you're already pregnant. In chapter 15 we introduce cutting-edge techniques for reducing stress. We specifically found techniques that don't take much time but produce huge results.

Science has now confirmed that what happens in the womb can have a profound, lifelong effect on a baby. In the last twenty years, Jason Birnholz, a doctor and former Harvard Medical School professor who was one of the creators of diagnostic ultrasound imaging, has taken more than fifty thousand fetal sonogram pictures. He has concluded that fetuses—especially those beyond the fourth month of pregnancy—aren't much different from newborns, in part because they display emotional reactions similar to those of babies. Science now suggests that a baby's time in the womb isn't dark and silent.

Although science has confirmed this, because we are parents it really didn't take another doctor or a Harvard professor to tell us this. Like most mothers you might ask, Lana was certain that our children were conscious while she carried them in her womb.

As a fetus develops, it experiences two levels of consciousness. The first is the collective sensation of the individual molecular sensors in each cell. We usually refer to this stream of experience as subconscious. From the moment of conception, subconscious experience shapes later development and personality characteristics. Eastern beliefs and Western science combined suggest that this subconscious experience is behind some of the gut feelings and intuitive knowledge we experience as adults.

The fetus's second level of consciousness comes into being as the organized central nervous system forms, including the brain and its neurological networks. Once this happens, a fetus is constantly tuned into its mother's thoughts, feelings, and actions. The womb environment therefore shapes brain growth, personality, temperament, and even brain power from the moment of conception.

At just twenty-eight days old, when the embryo measures a quarter of an inch in diameter, the tiny blood vessel that is the precursor of the heart begins to beat, and the three primary parts of the brain have already formed. Even though consciousness isn't apparent at this time, cellular biology suggests the presence of a subconscious awareness. At six weeks, when the fetus is only half an inch long, it can respond to touch. By four months, the fetus develops curiosity about the womb environment and begins to play with the umbilical cord or suck his or her thumb. At nineteen to twenty weeks, the fetus has begun sustaining brain-wave patterns, and by twenty-two weeks, the fetus has brain patterns similar to an adult's.

During pregnancy, communication between mother and child occurs at several levels, and in both directions. Thomas Verny, a psychiatrist at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, describes them as sensory, molecular, and intuitive communication.

Sensory Communication

Verny reports that at five months, fetuses have been seen reacting to loud sounds by raising their arms and covering their ears, and they even react to a light flashed at the mother's abdomen. At twenty-two weeks, fetuses who tasted bitter poppy seed oil that was introduced to the womb were observed to grimace, and fetuses who tasted sweet substances swallowed amniotic fluid at twice the usual rate. During the last trimester, brain-wave studies show sustained visual and tactile sensation, and a fetus even experiences times of sleep and wakefulness. Just six months after conception, the fetus is a “sensing, feeling, aware, and remembering human being,” according to Verny.

Your fetus is very sensitive. Fetuses have responded to gentle pricks to their heels with facial grimacing, clenched hands, and leg withdrawal. Mothers and nurses caring for preterm babies frequently observe a pain response.

Given this information, what is your baby experiencing inside you? Researchers at the University of North Carolina suspended a waterproof microphone in the amniotic fluid of one mother to find out. A fetus is sensitive to sound at just nineteen weeks. At this point, your unborn baby can hear the pulse of the blood flowing through your veins, hear your stomach rumble, sense food passing through your gastrointestinal tract, and hear and remember the sound of your voice.

In a groundbreaking study, University of North Carolina psychologist Anthony DeCasper showed that newborns not only hear their mother's voices, they can also assemble sound patterns and remember what was said (not the meaning of the words, just their sound patterns). DeCasper had sixteen mothers tape their readings of three children's stories. At six and a half weeks of pregnancy, one group of women read the first story three times a day. The second group read the second story, and the third group read the third.

When the babies were born, DeCasper offered each infant a choice of the story the mother had read to him or her prenatally and another one of the stories. To find out which choice the baby made, DeCasper invented the “suckometer”: a nipple on a baby bottle connected to a computer-controlled tape player. Using the suckometer, the babies could switch between two taped stories by changing their sucking speed.

Within just a few hours of birth, thirteen of the sixteen babies adjusted their sucking rhythm to hear the familiar story, Another suckometer study, conducted by Robin Panneton, a Virginia Tech psychologist, tested melodies sung by the mother to her fetus. The babies repeatedly chose the melody their mothers had sung to them over other melodies—convincing evidence of prenatal memory.

Your unborn baby can not only see, hear, taste, and feel but can remember sensations as well. When a pregnant woman caresses her abdomen, talks, or sings, she sends messages to her baby through the baby's senses. There's evidence that babies whose mothers sing lullabies to them in the womb are happier, that babies who hear classical baroque music while in the womb display natural musical ability, and that babies begin to make associations based on their mother's language and even the dialect they hear in the womb.

Sounds that unborn babies hear actually help to shape their brains, especially during periods of rapid development. Listening to classical music (especially from the baroque period) also promotes an alert, relaxed alpha brain-wave state in the mother. This boosts the mother's positive endorphins, reduces her stress-hormone levels, and promotes growth programs in her baby.

The fetus also sends messages to the mother. Whereas newborns speak to their mothers through crying, unborn babies communicate through kicking. Mothers are naturally able to tell the difference between the meanings of their baby's cries. An “I'm tired” cry is very different from an “I'm in pain” cry. In the same way, a fetus might kick lightly when he or she is happy but kick violently (and painfully for the mother!) when he or she is upset. Mothers who want their babies are far more attuned to this communication than anxious or depressed mothers who are distracted.

Molecular Communication

There's a lot going on at the molecular level. Maternal emotions and thoughts are communicated to the baby through hormones. Hormone levels change dramatically when a woman experiences different emotions, and these hormones cross the placenta and affect the fetus similarly. If the mother is stressed, more adrenaline, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and sex hormones reach the fetus, triggering defense mechanisms in the baby at the expense of growth. If the mother is calm, adequate levels of serotonin and dopamine and lower levels of adrenaline and cortisol tell the baby that the mother is happy and at peace.

Bruce Lipton, the author of
The Biology of Belief
, described it like this: “These decisively important love/fear signals are relayed to the fetus via the blood-borne molecules produced in response to the mother's perception of her environment.” He continues, “One important part of the new credo. . . is turning away from the Darwinian notion of the ‘survival of the fittest' and adopting a new credo, the survival of the most loving.”

Intuitive Communication

Beyond sensory and molecular communication, there is a special connection between mother and baby during pregnancy that has been described by countless mothers, who believe they “just know” what is happening with their babies. This doesn't go only for mothers, either; fathers communicate with their unborn children at the sensory level and the intuitive level. They can also interact at the molecular level by supporting the mother emotionally and doing all they can to keep her stress levels low.