Mother coins unborn child

Even in the womb, people are shaped. Certain influences in the womb are passed on to the fetus.

The significance of the nine months in the womb for the later onset of diseases is increasingly becoming the focus of science. While it has often been puzzling why some people are more likely to suffer from certain diseases than others, recent research has shown that the effects that a fetus has been subjected to while in the womb are decisive for later susceptibility to diseases such as diabetes, depression and the heart -cycle-diseases

In the past, research has focused more on genetic factors or personal lifestyle to explain the occurrence of certain diseases. However, several studies have recently found a link between the effects that a fetus has undergone in the womb and the evidence of later disease. Clearly, the lifelong health impact of the nine months in the womb has long been underestimated.

The certain risk factors such as genetic predisposition, lack of exercise, obesity, unhealthy diet or stress that can promote the onset of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer, medical has long been known and extensively studied. However, the significance of the nine months in the womb to a person's lifelong health has not yet been clarified. This is how Professor Dr. Berthold Koletzko, Chair of the Foundation for Child Health „schwangerundkind.de“, that „in the nine months before the birth (...) much more (happens) than a rigidly predetermined development, at the end of the birth of a baby is. "Because „the nutrients, trace elements and stress hormones that enter the mother's circulation from the mother via the placenta are, according to our current findings, a decisive factor in determining whether a person will suffer from civilization diseases such as hypertension or diabetes in the course of their lives, overweight or dangerously high cholesterol levels and therefore prone to diseases of the cardiovascular system and metabolism. "Thus, most of the influences and stimuli that a expectant mother is exposed to during pregnancy directly affect the health of the child

Studies assume that it is precisely these influences that determine people's health and susceptibility to disease for a lifetime. Here, according to the medical profession, a preprogramming („fetal programming“) of lifelong health, because in any phase of life, the human being grows and develops faster than during the nine months until his birth. Therefore, even the slightest disturbance in this period has an extremely strong effect on the organism. For example, a study by the English epidemiologist David Baker has shown that a lack of nutrition of the mother, to birth can lead to small children, which in turn are then subject to a significantly increased heart attack risk in old age. For newborns weighing less than 2.5 kilos, the risk of heart attack increases by about 50 percent.

Prof. Koletzko explains: "The programmatic influences of nutrition in the earliest phase of life on health in later life are today a particularly important topic of biomedical research". It is not only a malnutrition but also the excessive food intake of mothers to evaluate critically. Because if too much food intake, the children are usually also fed on and too heavy on the world. However, overweight infants are more prone to asthma, allergies or diabetes later in life and are at increased risk for cancer. „If mothers are not careful, they can set the course for overweight and diabetes in their children even before birth, "said Arne Astrup, nutritionist at the University of Copenhagen (fp, 07.10.2010)