Meg Farris / Medical Reporter
There may be a reason why you constantly have to battle to keep your weight down.
New science is showing that nutrition is more important during pregnancy than we thought.
And good nutrition could mean a thinner, smarter child.
More evidence that you are what your mother ate while you were in the womb. Studies on animals and humans strongly suggest that when pregnant women eat way too many omega-6 fatty acids and not enough omega-3 fatty acids, it sets her child up for a lifetime of being overweight with health problems.
"And then they looked at the umbilical cord and the health of the baby, the overall health when they were born. In other words, their weight, their blood work, to see if they had high cholesterol or high insulin levels, and it was clear from the study, which was a well controlled, randomized trial, that mothers who had higher intakes of the good fat, omega-3 fatty acid and lower intakes of the bad fat, had healthier, leaner babies," said Dr. Melinda Sothern of the LSUHSC School of Public Health.
Omega-3 fatty acids are in cold water fish such as salmon and tuna. But the American diet is low in the omega-3's and too high in the omega-6 fatty acids in other vegetable oils like soybean, sunflower, canola and corn oils.
"The baby in the womb, when the mother is pregnant, is not getting the right balance of nutrients. And when the baby does not get the right balance of nutrients, it alters the genetic code and genes that are supposed to turn on don't. And it alters the way that baby's metabolism handles carbohydrates, fats, protein, for the rest of their life," said Dr. Sothern who is an expert in childhood obesity and exercise physiology.
Unborn babies who get too little of the healthful nutrition from the mother's diet, or too much junk food with no nutrition, could have genetic programming that lasts a lifetime.
"They are more likely during preschool years, during school years, during teenage and adult years, to have higher rates of obesity, higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of heart disease and higher rates of hypertension," she explained.
And when the expectant mother eats a lot of junk food releasing "reward chemicals" in her brain, that too can be transferred to child's genetic programming. Junk food can also program the baby's cells in another harmful way.
"And the danger of some of these poor nutrients is that not only are they useless because they don't contribute to the baby's health, but they actually can offer their own damage because they can promote inflammation which can damage the cells ability to ward off stress, ward off disease," Dr. Sothern continued.
Fish, like tuna, can have mercury contamination which is dangerous to unborn babies.
So check with your doctor for the best source of food or supplements of omega-3 fatty acids.
