Pregnancy, nutrition and epigenetics

The orchestra of nutrition.

There are fundamental concepts of life, which stretch backwards and forwards.

The Bible talks about how the sins of the father can affect their descendants to the third and fourth generations. While the Bible doesn’t define those sins, little did the writers of that comment know that that is a literal fact.  Read on.

From a scientist’s point of view, the key word would be epigenetics.   Even if we don't think about epigenetics, or understand it, people down through the ages have known exactly what epigenetics is.  There is another word for it, and that is rational commonsense.  Most of us know inately, that how we live affects the end product of our lives.  The rules are unwritten, but obvious to a logical thinker.

Ask any car manufacturer, and they can give you a mechanical definition of epigenetics.

The Start: Pregnancy, and it’s effects on the baby

The Car Assembly line is a very good allegorical comparison to growing a baby.

Right at the start, the manufacture brings together all the materials to be used at every stage.  Doesn't quite apply to babies, but you eat every day, so there are your baby materials. These materials will affect the way your baby’s genes work. 

The car parts brought in to the factory, could be of the best quality, medium quality, or lousy quality, depending on the "intelligence" of the factory owner.  Nevertheless, the parts provided are for the building blocks which the assembly line workers must use.

And what you eat, drink, think, believe, and breathe forms some of the building blocks of how a baby grows. 

The car is put together in a set order, following a manual or blueprint. 

Certain things can affect the assembly line.  Materials aren't everything.  Things which affect where materials are put, are also relevant. Power cuts, worker strife, and other conditions which might result in workers damaging the car constructon as it goes along, are all important.  Not to mention laziness, carelessness or moods of the “worker”.

So it is with babies.  Materials aren't everything.  They are very important, but during pregnancy, if the mother does something that affects herself, by proxy, (binge drinkin,g drug use, smoking etc) those choices can also affect the baby. A heroin addict’s baby has a horrendous future ahead of it, and though some say methadone babies have a better prospect, that is debatable.

The car assembly line moves forward, never backwards.  Rivets are added in a certain order.  Screws, bushes, springs etc.. are “built” upon the core foundation.

What say the assembly worker is “super efficient” and puts on a hose too short, or misses out parts that cushion … or ? And so the car is built part by part.  Finally, the "skin" is painted, everything is polished, packaged, and sent out to the car dealer, who shines it up to make it look perfect.

And you walk in, look at it, and think, "That's nice.  It’s beautiful!".

Just like you look at your baby, count the toes, and fingers, see what looks like a nice face, and think, "That's nice. Beatutiful! Perfect!!".

What are your concerns about this bright shiny red car you are thinking of buying?  You want the car to do it's job; to be reliable, to run smoothly, to be safe, and to have the least possible maintenance on it. 

You take note WHICH petrol to use, WHICH oil to use, etc., ... after all, you don't want to invalidate the warranty do you?

Same applies to babies. 

History proves that babies grow on artificial formula and appear to be okay, and can grow into what appear to be healthy humans.  But are they? 

You can't compare them to the child they would have been, had the right petrol and oil (breastmilk) been used. 

The grown up Formula fed person may say, "Oh but I'm okay."  Well, are they?  Today's generation of middle aged and elderly are the biggest users of pharmaceutical medicine.  "Ah, but that's the process of getting old!" they say.  But is it?  Do people nowdays, live until the age of 167?  (Use Tamysh Kipshidze article).

Or is that drug prescription use in middle age, the result of constantly breaking the rules which "invalidate the warranty"?

You drive your new shiny car on the correct side of the road, and you treat it with care.  If you don't, you know what the result will be.

But the bottom line is that IF somewhere along the assembly line, substandard goods were used to make that car,... you are going to find out all about that at some point in that car's life.  What do you do then? Some purchase agreements now have what we call a "Lemon" clause. If it’s a dud and doesn’t work, you can get it replaced.

Unlike cars or other whitewear with “lemon” clauses, we can't send babies backwards and ask for a new one because we only have one shot at the baby growing business.

Westerners are sometimes lulled into some sort of soporific hynopsis, ... aka... how old is your baby?  "Three days old".  Incorrect.  That baby is 38 weeks or thereabouts, PLUS three days. Conception is the beginning of an intricate process, with the baby "born" after 38 weeks being the time frame to integrate all the ingredients used to make the baby from the very first day of conception, until the day the baby is brought forth for the world to see.

After birth our baby’s biochemistry and immune systems are flexible, depending on the choices we as parents, make.  Once they leave home, their lives are dependent upon the choices they then make.

Ignorance is not bliss.

 Just as we drive off with a new car, not realizing that the original quality of some parts were substandard until maybe a year, or ten years along the way, we might not know that the baby we birthed with five toes, and five fingers, also has an internal manufacturing “lemon component”. 

For so long now, many doctors have blamed diseases on genes, but it's not as simple as that.  Just say you have a G6PD deficiency, which is a "genetic" disorder.  No big deal actually, because a G6PD is a “disease” where nothing happens unless there is an environmental trigger.  Many "diseases" are like that.  Diabetes, for instance.  In both world wars, when refined flour and sugar were not available, diabetes rates plummeted because the environmental "triggers" were not there for people to chose to eat.  No trigger, no disease.

BUT here is the most important fact to know about epigenetics:

The ultimate test of epigenetics was in the 1930, and is written up in "Pottinger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition" by Dr. Frances Pottinger.

Source http://www.healmarketplace.com/herbs/htnp2.html

Pottinger went further, and took those fourth generation unhealthy cats and reversed the damage… but it took another four generations to get those cats back to where they started from.

So sometimes, what goes wrong with us, can be a result of our lifestyle choices, not the genes which our choices trigger.  So “Epigenetics” means bad choices which make genes malfunction, and alter the "conductor setting” which tells our genes how to work. Sometimes, through no choice of our own (dumped chemicals, pollutants in the air ~ fill your own list...) we and our children can suffer "epigenetic" damage while they grow.  We *** can*** also pass on our epigenetic damage to our children.

Somehow, when something crops up in a five year old child, the parent thinks that the "problem" was never there before.  (Obviously with something like a fracture, it wasn't).  Even something as simple as the way our children's bodies respond to a cold, can be made worse by the type of "petrol" we are running their "car" on.

Doctors tell us our problems might be our Grandparents' fault; that epigenetics is at the basis of our wellbeing; and chronic disease; that Assisted Reproductive technology can epigenetically affect the children; our weight during pregnancy can affect whether or not our children get diabetes; that inadequate nutrition in the early postnatal period can affect IQ and brain cognition;

But the way genes work, is not something set in concrete, but are constantly changeable.  By going through pregnancy the right way, we can reverse damage done in previous generations, and have the potential to bring to the birth point, as healthy a baby as is possible, if we know how.

We may not be able to "fix" everything, but we can have a very good go at it. As our children grow, if they chose to ignore "the natural laws of the manual", they too can invalidate the warranty, and pay the price. Our genes are malleable until we die.

From the day of conception my genes were malleable by the actions of my mother.  From birth, they were malleable, depending on what she did, how she treated me, how she fed me etc.  And even today, until the day I meet my Maker, I can help or hinder that blueprint which should be the “ultimate” in perfect design.  It is my choice.