courtesy: layoutsparks.com
The old wisdom used to be that you are what you eat. And that's bad enough (or good enough).
But now it seems that our habits don't just spill over in the table gathering, but it might be as profound as a link embedded in our children's brain chemistry.
New studies are discovering that when we eat junk food during pregnancy, we also are trasmitting our habits to the unborn.
And that is because what we eat provokes chemical reactions in our brains that affect the unborn, much in the same way we pass on addictions in newborns if we assume addictive substances.
This occurs when opioids are released in our brains when we eat junk food. Opioids are substances that are released when we consume fatty or sugary food.
But the same occurs in the brain of the unborn. They too, by reflection, also acquire a higher tolerance to junk food.
The experiment, which was conducted on rats, showed that the babies of rats fed with a diet high in sugar and fats, were inure to opioid receptor blockers that they were given. The opioid receptor blockers function in such a way that they block the release of dopamine, thereby the incentive to eat more of the fatty and sugary foods. However the baby rats still preferred sugary and fatty foods, signaling that they had acquired an insesnsitivity in their opioid signaling pathway.
The study should be helpful to those mothers when making food choices during pregnancies if they aim to prevent their children from preferring a poor diet and possibly prevent childhood obesity.
Source: MNT 3.4.13
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