Be Good to Your Womb - It May Determine Age Your Baby Will Live To

Scientists are finding out more and more about how important the womb is, when it comes to healthy babies.  A whole new school of thought has been raised about how critical the environment for the fetus is as it's growing inside a woman. Some even believe it's more important than the quality of the egg.

Now it may even determine how old your baby gets, and how well he ages, according to newswise.com.

New studies are finding that aging begins in the womb.  Now let me explain this.

And the offspring of mothers with lower levels of oxygen in the womb - which, in humans, can be a consequence of smoking during pregnancy or of pregnancy at high altitude - aged more quickly in adulthood.

The researchers found that adult rats born from mothers who had less oxygen during pregnancy had shorter telomeres than rats born from uncomplicated pregnancies, and experienced problems with the inner lining of their blood vessels - signs that they had aged more quickly and were predisposed to developing heart disease earlier than normal. However, when pregnant mothers in this group were given antioxidant supplements, this lowered the risk among their offspring of developing heart disease.

In a study funded by the British Heart Foundation, scientists report a study that involved measuring the length of telomeres in blood vessels of adult laboratory rats born from mothers who were or were not fed antioxidants during normal or complicated pregnancy.

The most common complication in pregnancy is a reduction in the amount of oxygen that the baby receives, and this can be due to a number of causes, including expectant mothers who smoke or who experience preeclampsia.

In the study,researchers found that adult rats born from mothers who had less oxygen during pregnancy had shorter telomeres than rats born from uncomplicated pregnancies, and experienced problems with the inner lining of their blood vessels - signs that they had aged more quickly and were predisposed to developing heart disease earlier than normal.

 "We already know that our genes interact with environmental risk factors, such as smoking, obesity and lack of exercise to increase our risk of heart disease, but here we've shown that the environment we're exposed to in the womb may be just as, if not more, important in programming a risk of adult-onset cardiovascular disease," researchers says, adding, ""Antioxidants are known to reduce aging, but here, we show for the first time that giving them to pregnant mothers can slow down the aging clock of their offspring. This appears to be particularly important when there are complications with the pregnancy and the fetus is deprived of oxygen. Although this discovery was found using rats, it suggests a way that we may treat similar problems in humans."

So if you're pregnant, or planning to be, ask your doctor about taking antioxidants.





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