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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 predi...

I've always loved my husband's hands.  Thin and long-fingered, they're delicate, like a sculptor's or a pianist's, and yet strong, too.  (He's yanked many a tooth in his career.) Now experts are saying that you can tell a lot about a man by looking at his hands . Not to be confused with other parts of his body! But men with short index fingers and long ring fingers are on average nicer towards women, and this stems -- believe it or not -- from the hormones these men have been exposed to in their mother’s womb, according to a new study by researchers at McGill University.  Something new to blame mothers for! Men with these kinds of hands also tend to have more children. That's not entirely clear but there's a definite link between fetal life and adult behavior.  “It is fascinating to see that moderate variations of hormones before birth can actually influence adult behaviour in a selective way,” says Simon Young, a McGill Emeritus Professor ...

A while back I was intrigued by a new area of research that delved into what effect the environment of the womb had on a fetus.  It had an unusual name, fetal origins , and it was built around how the first nine months of a fetus' life -- and its interactions with its mother before it's born -- has a huge impact on its life. I didn't hear much more about it until today, when I came across a story at newswise.com about how hair from a newborn can tell a lot about what went on in the womb, while it was "hatching." " It can tell if a person recently used drugs or an athlete was doping. It can provide information about hormones and expose environmental toxins," the Web site reports. "It  can also reveal the womb environment in which an infant formed." Why care?  As I found out earlier, a mother's uterus affects which genes are turned on in the fetus, and how the first nine months of your life shape the rest of it is now becoming more an...

Be very careful when you're pregnant not to get an infection.  A new study has found that moms-to-be who do are more likely to have the infection impair their fetuses' neurological functions, resulting in autism or schizophrenia. According to newswise.com, Johns Hopkins researchers report that fetal mice — especially males — show signs of brain damage that lasts into their adulthood when they are exposed in the womb to a maternal immune system kicked into high gear by a serious infection or other malady. The findings suggest that some neurologic diseases in humans could be similarly rooted in prenatal exposure to inflammatory immune responses. "The investigators say that the part of the brain responsible for memory and spatial navigation (the hippocampus) was smaller over the long term in the male offspring exposed to the overactive immune system in the womb," the Web site notes. The males also had fewer nerve cells in their brains and their brains contained a ty...

Even if you're as skinny as a pencil, having a mother who was obese may make you die sooner. That's according to a story by Kim Painter at USA Today, who writes that "Middle-aged adults whose mothers were obese or overweight in pregnancy have increased risks for developing serious cardiovascular problems and dying young, a new study shows." Genes and upbringing may play a part, Painter reports. "But the results also add to growing evidence that adverse conditions in the womb might have profound effects on offspring long after birth, says the study, published Tuesday in the British medical journal BMJ ." This, actually, has been around since 1999, when a blog about schizophrenia ran a story on how conditions in the womb affect health well into adulthood.  Calling it "fetal programming," the site went on to say that "programming has permanent effects that alter responses in later life and can modify susceptibility to disease. . .involves...