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It's All in the Womb

The most important time of your life, it turns out, may happen before you are even born.

A new study shows that the first 266 days of life – the ones spent in your mother’s womb – very likely set the stage for whether you’ll later develop cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, infertility, obesity, depression, heart disease and maybe even how long you’ll live.

The theory, published in the scientific journal Biology of the Neonate, suggests that as the fetus develops, it tries to protect itself against what life might be like outside of the womb, based upon its experiences inside the womb. For example, babies conceived during the Dutch famine in the mid-1940s were more prone to obesity, because they learned how to efficiently store fat during lean times in the womb.

This means that the pregnant mother’s diet, hormonal changes, maternal exposure to disease and contamination and her general health, fitness and lifestyle could play crucial roles in her baby’s future health all the way through to the end of life, not just its prenatal health.

It also means mothers could start to protect their children from some of the dangers that lie ahead, simply by taking better care of themselves during pregnancy. What it doesn’t mean, however, is that you can stop trying to prevent disease in your adult life, just because the die may have already been cast: Human disease is caused by a mix of genetic predisposition and environmental factors. Whatever happened prior to birth, there’s still a lot you can do now to maintain a long and healthy life.

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To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org