pregnancy – GOLLYGEE!

According to five paper from Danish researchers, it just might be. The work appeared in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology back in June. An exerpt from the news release:

he definition of a drink in these papers comes from the Danish National Board of Health, which states one standard drink is equal to 12 grams of pure alcohol.
However, the amount of alcohol in a standard drink varies significantly from country to country. In the UK the volume of alcohol in a drink is measured in units and one unit of alcohol is defined as 7.9 grams.

1,628 women took part in the studies. The average maternal age was 30.9 years, 50.1% were first-time mothers, 12.1% were single and 31.4% reported smoking during pregnancy.

The papers looked at the effects of alcohol on IQ, attention span, executive functions such as planning, organisation, and self-control in five year old children.

Overall, the papers found that low to moderate weekly drinking in early pregnancy had no significant effect on neurodevelopment of children aged five years, nor did binge drinking. Focusing on children’s IQ and executive functions, no differences in test performance were observed between children whose mothers reported 1-4 or 5-8 drinks/week per week in pregnancy compared to children of abstaining mothers. However one finding showed that high levels of alcohol, intake of 9 or more drinks per week, was associated with lower attention span amongst five year olds…

I’d recommend not taking the risk. No matter what the study says.

Is it because humans walk upright?

The prevailing explanation for why pregnancy doesn’t last that long boils down to something called the “obstetrical dilemma.” Humans walk upright. And the size and shape of our pelvises are constrained by our bipedal way of getting around in the world. If they got much bigger, mothers wouldn’t walk as well. So babies’ brains could only get so big and still fit through the birth canal, the conventional wisdom holds.

Or is it for other reasons:

“Mothers gestate a baby as long as they can metabolically,” Holly Dunsworth, an assistant professor of anthropology at University of Rhode Island, tells Shots.

She and her colleagues concluded that a human baby born at a chimp’s level of development would require the average human birth canal to be about 3 centimeters bigger, an increase of a little more than an inch in diameter.

That’s feasible, the researchers say. “We show that’s within the range of variation now,” Dunsworth says. “Those people with wider birth canals aren’t walking any worse.”

So what is the limiting factor? Apparently, it’s how much energy Mom can divert from her own metabolism to the growth and maintenance of a fetus, the researchers say. We humans are able to crank up our metabolism to about twice its normal level and sustain that turbo mode for quite a while.

From NPR.

GOLLYGEE!

Tag: pregnancy

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