And yet plenty others seem to catch cold after cold; sidelined with a perpetually stuffed-up nose and hacking cough that lasts all winter long. So what’s different between these two groups? Research shows your cold and flu vulnerability may come down to a few important—and unexpected—habits, like how much sugar you eat or how dry your nose is.

Assess your risk with these seven signs of impaired immunity, and learn what you can do to stay healthy.

1. You have a sweet tooth.
Eating too much sugar doesn’t just pack on pounds …

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating 100 g of sugar (think three cans of soda) significantly hampered the ability of white blood cells to kill bacteria for up to 5 hours afterward.

2. You don’t drink enough water.
There’s a reason moms and doctors always push fluids on you when you’re sick.

Your body needs plenty of water to flush out toxins—and yes, coffee and tea are acceptable sources. How much fluid you should drink daily varies from person to person. You’re drinking the right amount if your urine is pale yellow.

3. You’ve got a lot of weight to lose.
You know excess weight is unhealthy for your heart, brain and other organs. But it’s also bad for your immune system.

In fact, those who become most seriously ill with swine flu tend to share the same characteristic: a body mass index over 40, meaning they are morbidly obese. Excess weight can cause hormonal imbalances and inflammation that impairs the immune system’s ability to fight infection.

4. You drink water from a well.

Surprisingly, the cleanliness of your drinking water can play a role in whether or not you get sick.

As many as 25 million Americans drink well water that contains more than the safe levels of arsenic determined by the EPA. Arsenic has been linked to several different cancers, and affects the immune response to swine flu as well. When researchers from Dartmouth Medical School inoculated two groups of mice with the H1N1 virus, the group that had spent 5 weeks drinking arsenic-tainted water developed suppressed immune systems, and many died. The mice that didn’t drink the water got the flu but recovered completely.

If your well water tests high, consider switching to bottled water or investing in a remediation system that will remove the arsenic.

5. Your nose is Sahara desert-dry.
As uncomfortable as it may be, a runny nose is actually a good defense against colds and the flu.

Sounds gross, but mucus traps viruses and clears them from the body. If your nasal passages are too dry, germ invaders have an easier time. If the dryness is a temporary problem, irrigate your nasal passages with a squeeze bottle or neti pot of saline solution. A humidifier can also help. If dryness is chronic, see your doctor to determine the underlying cause.

6. You’re always seriously stressed out.
It’s no coincidence that you tend to catch a cold after a big work deadline.
According to a report by the American Psychological Association, long-term stress weakens the responses of your immune system. In addition, “if you become stressed while you have the flu, your symptoms can get worse,” says Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University and author of The Secret Life of Germs: What They Are, Why We Need Them, and How We Can Protect Ourselves Against Them.

7. You’re always nursing a cold.
This means your immune system isn’t operating at top speed.
The average adult picks up one to three colds each season that typically last 3 or 4 days. If you get more, your resistance might be low. Getting more sleep, regular exercise and rounding out your diet to get lots of healthy veggies and these foods can help.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/16/surprising-signs-your-immunity-needs-boost/#ixzz1medyvIDA

As women, we have some special nutritional concerns depending on how old we are and what stage of life we’re in.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association or ADA) recommends this for a healthy daily diet for weight maintenance:

• Whole grains – three 1-ounce servings
• Dairy – three fat-free or low-fat servings
• Protein – five to six ounces of lean meats or other proteins
• Fruit – two cups
• Vegetables – two-and-a-half cups

This menu provides a good balance of nutrition. But women also have these special nutritional needs that should be considered:

• Low Iron or Iron Deficient Anemia (IDA) – Iron is used by the body to make hemoglobin, which is a protein inside the red blood cells that carries oxygen to all parts of the body. Low iron or not enough hemoglobin is known as iron deficient anemia.

Women are at higher risk for IDA if they have very heavy or long periods. Women can also become anemic after lose significant amounts of blood during childbirth.

A diet rich in iron can help ensure that the body has enough iron to produce healthy red blood cells. Eggs, dairy, fish, meat, poultry, certain green leafy vegetables, and iron fortified foods are good sources of iron.

Your body can more easily absorb iron when vitamin C is also present, so try adding strawberries to fortified cereal or mandarin oranges to spinach salad.

• Calcium – You may not think about your bones being alive, but they are and they need calcium to grow strong and healthy. Osteoporosis is a condition that results when bones become weak and brittle. Women are at higher risk of developing osteoporosis than men, so it is important to support strong bones by eating a diet rich in calcium.

In the U.S. dairy products are the primary source of calcium. Other calcium-rich foods include leafy green vegetables, certain grains, cabbage, summer squash, green beans, and garlic.
It’s also important have enough vitamin D, which works in the intestines to help your body absorb calcium. A half-hour in the sun provides vitamin D for your body. Other sources include shrimp, cod, eggs, and vitamin D fortified milk.

• Folic Acid – Folic acid is a B vitamin that is used by the body to make new cells. While everyone of every age needs folic acid, research has shown that it is especially important for women of childbearing age to help protect a baby during development.

Folic acid has been shown to help prevent birth defects, especially defects of the brain and spine. Good sources of folic acid include citrus fruit, leafy greens, and dried beans and peas. Folic acid is also available in supplements as well as in fortified cereals.

Whatever your stage of life, your health will benefit from a diet that is rich in plant-based foods and low on alcohol and caffeine.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/22/healthy-diet-for-women/#ixzz1lzkQ3XA5

Researchers said that past studies have found conflicting results when it comes to the effects of breastfeeding on kids’ lungs, with some research suggesting that moms with asthma who breastfeed may be putting their kids at risk as well.

But the new research hints that’s not the case, and that babies with asthmatic moms may get just as much benefit from breastfeeding, if not more, compared to those with asthma-free mothers.

“I think the evidence is that breastfeeding increases lung volume, independent of if the mother is asthmatic or not,” said Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, who studies asthma at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and wasn’t involved in the new work.

“If the lung volume is increased, then you are less susceptible to get asthma,” he told Reuters Health. “It’s important even to tell asthmatic mothers to breastfeed their children.”

In one study, published Friday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, about 1,500 UK kids were followed from their birth in the mid-1990s.

Families responded to surveys related to breastfeeding as well as secondhand smoke exposures and other known asthma risks starting when kids were babies. At age eight to 14, the kids came into the lab for a range of lung function and allergy tests.

Dr. Claudia Kuehni from the University of Bern, Switzerland and her colleagues found that the longer kids were breastfed, the better they performed on one test, measuring the speed of air coming out of the lungs.

On two other tests, which also assess how much air the lungs can hold, breastfeeding for four months or longer was linked to better scores only in kids whose moms had asthma.

The researchers reported that the better lung function did not seem to be related to a history of fewer childhood respiratory infections – a known benefit of breastfeeding.

Kuehni’s team said that the lung boost attributed to breastfeeding might not make a difference for a healthy kid, but on a wider scale, it could mean that breastfeeding would protect more kids from breathing problems.

One limitation of their study, the researchers noted, is that only about one-third of the kids they followed from birth and invited to do lung tests — more than 4,000 in total — actually participated, which could skew the results if certain types of kids were more likely to come in than others.

In the other study, from New Zealand, a second group of researchers also followed babies from birth, but instead of testing lung function they asked parents of six-year-olds if their kids had ever been diagnosed with asthma or had used an inhaler or wheezed in the last year.

With data on more than 1,000 kids, including about 200 with asthma at their last visit, a team led by Karen Silvers found that each month of exclusive breastfeeding (without any formula mixed in) was tied to a nine-percent drop in asthma risk.

Silvers, from the University of Otago in Christchurch, and her colleagues reported their findings Sunday in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Karmaus said that researchers have questioned whether breast milk might carry immune cells related to allergies and asthma from mother to baby, putting infants of asthmatic moms at risk of breathing problems — and that some concerned mothers with asthma may avoid breastfeeding as a result.

But the new findings suggest they shouldn’t worry, he said.

He hypothesized that babies’ suckling during breastfeeding may strengthen their lungs and help protect them against asthma later — but that hasn’t been proven.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/03/breastfeeding-tied-to-stronger-lungs-less-asthma/#ixzz1lKTs3LYV

John Megrue, CEO of Apax Partners U.S., will chair a business group that includes bankers and consulting experts and will help coordinate work being done by several governments and other international donors, as well as filling in gaps in the funding.

Women need to receive antiretroviral drugs to prevent the virus being passed to their unborn babies.

“There are no technological issues around it. There are no medical issues around it. It does not exist in the wealthy part of the world,” Megrue said. “But there are still almost 400,000 children a year born – primarily in sub-Saharan Africa - with HIV.”

Ambassador Eric Goosby, a top U.S. AIDS official, said that although the group set a goal of zero transmission by 2015, in reality about 13 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers will unavoidably be born with the virus.

Randi Zuckerberg, who founded RtoZ Studios after leaving the Facebook company that her brother Mark started, will lend the power of social media to increase awareness about the issue, by pulling in 1,000 influential Twitter and Facebook users in an expansion of an earlier social media effort to raise $200 million to fight malaria.

“I’m calling this a social good broadcast experiment,” she said. “The long-term vision is for this to be a group of thousands or millions of people who can all broadcast in a coordinated manner where there is a global crisis.”

Other business leaders involved in the project include Dominic Barton, managing director of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., and Cynthia Carroll, CEO of the mining company Anglo American PLC.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/27/business-social-media-to-prevent-babies-with-hiv/#ixzz1kgPa6FiX

There are seriously apps for every walk of life. I’ve mentioned the best period tracker apps in a previous post. For pregnant women, you have a huge array of paid and free apps to download on your iPhone or iPod touch. I’m a penny pincher, so I’m an advocate of free apps. You can even find free versions of paid apps – these typically have limited features, but they’re still pretty awesome.

While no iPhone app will make your pregnancy-related aches and pains go away, they do make keeping track of your pregnancy easier. In many cases, carrying around your iPhone or iPod touch is a heck of a lot easier than carrying a big ole pregnancy book. Pregnancy apps are awesome resources to help you survive your pregnancy.

Top Free Pregnancy Apps 

Here is my top 10 FREE pregnancy apps to help pregnant moms survive their 40 weeks of pregnancy. (You can download these apps easily from the iTunes store. The app links are in red, and they will take you to the iTunes store. You can also search their names in the App store on your iPhone or iPod touch.)

BabyBump Free

1.BabyBump Free is a nifty pregnancy app that makes it easy for you to keep track of your pregnancy. From the daily and weekly information and photos of your baby’s development to the personalized pregnancy countdown with a progress bar, you will absolutely love this free app. This free iPhone pregnancy app also gives you a list of common pregnancy symptoms, bodily changes, and food cravings that you should expect each week. You can keep track of your daily weight gain, symptoms, and more.

BabyCenter My Pregnancy Today

2.BabyCenter My Pregnancy Today is a free app from one of the most respected authorities on pregnancy. This app helps keep you up-to-date on your pregnancy day by day, how your body’s changing, fetal development (photos included), pregnancy checklist, free pregnancy videos, nutrition guide, and pregnancy progress tracker. You can get BabyCenter’s expert advice away from the computer and on the go. Pretty awesome!

I’m Expecting – Pregnancy App

3.I’m Expecting – Pregnancy App is a must-have for any pregnant woman. This free pregnancy app lets you track your symptoms, your pregnancy weight gain, doctor’s appointments, and more. It gives you weekly updates on your baby’s growth and development, expert advice on how to alleviate common pregnancy symptoms, and information on what’s happening in your body week by week. You can even take photos of your growing tummy every week and create a slideshow.

Pregnancy Tracker – What to Expect

4.Pregnancy Tracker from What to Expect is the perfect companion to the bestselling pregnancy book,What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff. Keep track of pregnancy with this absolutely free pregnancy app! Available from the iTunes store, Pregnancy Tracker from What to Expect features a due date calculator, week by week details of your baby’s growth and development, illustrations of your baby’s development, updates on body changes to expect, countdown to your due date and more.

Fertility and Pregnancy Calculator

4.Fertility and Pregnancy Calculator is a useful app for both pregnant women and women trying to conceive. If you’re trying to get pregnant, this free app helps calculate your ovulation date and fertile days, and it even tells you when to make love to improve your chance at pregnancy. For pregnant women, it allows you to keep up-to-date on when important pregnancy tests should be done, and when pregnancy events occur. This free pregnancy app was developed by the OB/GYN Dr. Amos Grunebaum in collaboration with BabyMed.com.Check it out!

Pregnancy Buzz by the Bump

5.Pregnancy Buzz by the Bump is a very creative and cute pregnancy app that keeps expectant mamas informed at every stage of their pregnancy. This free app from the creators of TheBump.com gives you expert tips and advice on everything you might want to know – including what’s safe to eat (and what foods to avoid), what to expect at your prenatal visits, and almost anything you want to know. You can search questions from other concerned moms-to-be, and you can even ask your own pregnancy questions and get answers from the community. This is a nifty pregnancy app for pregnant women – well-designed and best of all, free.

Read more: http://www.mypregnancybaby.com/top-10-free-pregnancy-iphone-apps/

There’s bad news for exhausted new parents craving more shut-eye — you can’t just assume that your baby’s sleep problems are normal and will soon pass.

A U.S. study published in the journal Pediatrics found that babies with sleep issues are several times more likely to still have difficulties when they are toddlers compared to babies who sleep well.

“Children don’t outgrow sleep problems, and their data shows this quite clearly.”

Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio found that one in 10 children under age three has a sleep problem like nightmares, wakings, trouble falling asleep or an inability to sleep in the child’s own bed — results within the range of other studies.

“Oftentimes the message is, ‘Don’t worry about Susie, this is typical and it will get better,’” said lead author Kelly Byars, a pediatric psychologist.

But her team found, and other experts agreed, that frequently it doesn’t.

Sleep problems “definitely start early, and (the researchers) showed that sleep problems persist over years,” said Lisa Meltzer, a pediatric sleep specialist at National Jewish Health in Colorado, who was not involved in the study.

“Children don’t outgrow sleep problems, and their data shows this quite clearly.”

The researchers surveyed more than 250 mothers about their children’s sleep behaviors when the children were six, 12, 24 and 36 months old.

If the children started out with no sleep problems, chances were good that none would develop, the study found.

But 21 to 35 out of every 100 children with a sleep problem continued to have issues later on.

The researchers also found that the types of sleep problems shifted as the children grew older.

When the children were under two years old, the most common issues reported included trouble falling and staying asleep. At age three, the children more frequently had nightmares and restlessness.

While formal sleep disorders are considered more medically serious, Byars said that sleep problems can have an impact on children’s mood, attention, learning and development — not to mention the sleep of parents

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/06/babies-sleep-problems-may-persist-over-years-study-says/#ixzz1ih8f96vB

EPA rules in place under the 1990 Clean Air Act have targeted acid rain and smog-forming chemicals emitting from power plants. But perhaps surprising to many, those rules have never included limits on mercury, a neurotoxin known to damage developing fetuses and children.

How this policy affects your health

The benefits of this new rule, in terms of dollars saved and death prevented, far outweigh the costs to companies and consumers, according to peer-reviewed EPA studies.

U.S. power plants account for only about 1% of global mercury emissions. Even so, for each dollar spent reducing mercury and hazardous air pollutant emissions under the new rule, the EPA projects up to $9 in health benefit savings by preventing an estimated 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks each year.

Among children, the new limits are projected to prevent 130,000 cases of asthma and 6,300 cases of acute bronchitis each year, the EPA estimates.

“These standards rank among the three or four most significant environmental achievements in the EPA’s history,” said John Walke, Clean Air director of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “This rule making represents a generational achievement.”

Despite federal limits on emissions of mercury from other sources, such as waste incinerators, there have been no limits on coal-fired power plants, which the EPA says constitute the single largest source of mercury emissions.

“As a mom, I’m especially excited to know that millions of mothers and babies will now be protected from mercury poisoning,” said Mary Anne Hitt, director of Beyond Coal Campaign, a clean energy advocacy group.

“We all teach our kids the simple rule that if you make a mess you should clean it up – and now polluters will have to follow that same rule,” she wrote in an e-mail conversation.

“Mothers around the country who have been worried about mercury pollution causing learning disabilities and other problems for their kids will be able to sleep easier tonight.”

Health experts have known for a long time that mercury causes damage to developing fetuses, with long-term effects on the child.

Methylmercury, found in fish and shellfish, can harm a child’s thinking, language, fine motor skills, memory, attention, and visual spatial skills when exposed in the womb.

One study estimates that for each part per million of mercury found in a mother’s hair — a common way of testing for mercury exposure — her child loses approximately 0.18 IQ points.

Outbreaks of methylmercury poisoning have resulted in some children being born with severe disabilities, even when their mothers did not show signs of nervous system damage. But adults are at risk for mercury poisoning too; symptoms can include impairment of vision, speech, hearing and walking.

In addition to mercury, the new EPA rule also limits emissions of hazardous air pollutants like arsenic, benzene, chromium, formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, and nickel.

How to protect against mercury exposure

Once airborne, mercury enters bodies of water through precipitation, becomes methylmercury, and accumulates in the food chain.

The EPA and the Food and Drug Administration recommend that pregnant women and young children limit their consumption of fish and shellfish to two meals a week, because the methylmercury contamination found in fish can cause harm to humans.

The EPA and FDA say that some larger predatory fish, such as shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish, should be avoided entirely by pregnant women and children.

Exposure can also occur from breathing in polluted air, for example near incinerators and coal-burning power plants.

A lab test using blood or hair sample can determine the methylmercury levels.

What’s the controversy?

The new rule requires that the vast majority of mercury contained in coal be captured and prevented from releasing into the air when burned for energy. It would require operators to shut down or upgrade the most environmentally dangerous power plants.

Power plant operators have three years to comply with the new standards, but plant operators may be granted additional time to install the necessary emissions improvement technologies if they are able to demonstrate a valid need.

Not everyone supports the new limits, in part because the new rules will increase costs for plant operators who need to make upgrades.

The rule has been criticized by industry groups and some Republicans.

“Analyses predict EPA’s rules will force the premature retirement of power plants that are needed to provide affordable, reliable power to consumers and our growing economy,” said Fred Upton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“Other plants will require multi-million dollar retrofits that will result in higher electricity bills,” said the Republican congressman from Michigan.

The EPA states that its rule is cost-effective and “ensures electric reliability,” noting that the agency has received more than 900,000 comments from industry and the public to better inform the decision.

Amid a divisive political climate and persistent unemployment, the EPA noted in its March 2011 rule proposal that it “finds that more jobs will be created in the air pollution control technology production field than may be lost as the result of compliance with these proposed rules.”

The final EPA rule regulating power plant mercury emissions has been decades in the making.

The 1990 version of the Clean Air Act signed into law by President George H.W. Bush directed the EPA to conduct studies to determine whether regulating mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from power plants was “appropriate and necessary.”

In December 2000, having completed the required studies, the EPA formally announced its intention to regulate mercury emissions from power plants.

Then in 2005, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the EPA reversed its determination that mercury regulations were “appropriate and necessary,” and removed power plants from the list of sources to be regulated. Instead the Bush-era EPA proposed the “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” a cap-and-trade system for mercury emissions.

Under “cap and trade,” mercury emissions would not be restricted, but heavy polluters would pay a fee that could be pocketed by companies whose factories or power plants pollute less.

In February 2009, the new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced a return to the 2000 decision to put limits on mercury emissions. The rule proposed on March 2011 was made final in an announcement on December 21 at the Children’s Medical Center in Washington.

Altogether, the environmental regulations beginning with the 1970 Clean Air Act have saved millions of American lives, according to the EPA.

To view the full article visit: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/29/health/protecting-babies-neurotoxins/index.html

These diseases are rarely fatal, unless you’re a newborn or someone with a suppressed immune system like me. My newborn buddies and I do have some protection, however: the rest of you.

Young babies, the immuno-compromised and people who getchemotherapy are not able to process most vaccinations. Live vaccines in particular, like those for measles and chickenpox, can make us sick. But if 75 percent to 95 percent of the population around us is vaccinated for a particular disease, the rest are protected through what is called herd immunity. In other words, your measles vaccine protects me against the measles.

It’s the reasoning of Clarence, the angel from “It’s a Wonderful Life”: If you are vaccinated, you won’t pass a disease on to someone else, who won’t pass it on to six more people, and on and on. To quote Clarence, “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives.”

Unfortunately, vaccination rates for many diseases in Europe and in areas of the United States are falling. This is partly due to Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor who published a paper, now discredited, in 1998 in The Lancet tying childhood vaccines to autism. Celebrities like Jim Carrey have also taken a strong antivaccine view. As a result of these unwarranted fears, childhood diseases are returning. The rate of whooping coughcases has spiked over the past 20 years. In 1990, the incidence was 2 per 100,000 people; in 2000 it was 3; by last year, it had risen to nearly 10.

Measles cases are also increasing. For each year between 2001 and 2008, the median number of cases in the United States was 56. In the first six months of this year alone, there were more than 150 reported cases — the most since 1996. A vast majority of those who were sickened had not been vaccinated or had uncertain vaccination histories. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, 400 to 500 Americans died of measles every year.

During last year’s flu season there were 55,403 reported cases of influenza A and B; 116 children died of the disease. And now flu season is back.

The truth is, we should not get vaccinated for ourselves alone; we should do it for one another. Having cancer has taught me the value of living in a community. We assist the infirm, pay our taxes and donate to charity, and getting vaccinated — for the flu, for adult whooping cough, for pneumonia — is just another important societal responsibility. After all, we’re in the same herd.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/opinion/for-the-herds-sake-vaccinate.html?_r=2

Scientists have a good understanding of a pregnant mother’s health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But little is known of how pregnancy can change a mother’s brain.

“Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers,” said psychologist Dr. Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. “Yet we know virtually nothing about it.”

Glynn and Curt A. Sandman, Ph.D., of the University of California - Irvine, have published a paper in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science that discusses current theories and findings on this critical time in a woman’s life.

At no other time in a woman’s life does she experience such massive hormonal fluctuations as during pregnancy. Research suggests that the reproductive hormones may ready a woman’s brain for the demands of motherhood — helping her becomes less rattled by stress and more attuned to her baby’s needs.

Although the hypothesis remains untested, Glynn surmises this might be why moms wake up when the baby stirs while dads snore on.

Another common characteristic associated with pregnancy and confirmed by research is “Mommy Brain,” or impaired memory before and after birth.

“There may be a cost” of these reproduction-related cognitive and emotional changes, said Glynn, “but the benefit is a more sensitive, effective mother.”

The article reviews research that refines earlier findings on the effects of the prenatal environment on the baby. For instance, evidence is accumulating that it’s not prenatal adversity on its own — say, maternal malnourishment or depression — that presents risks for a baby. Congruity between life in utero and life on the outside may matter more.

A fetus whose mother is malnourished adapts to scarcity and will cope better with a dearth of food once it’s born, but could become obese if it eats normally.

Timing appears to be a critical component too. Maternal anxiety early in gestation takes a toll on the baby’s cognitive development. But the same high levels of stress hormones later in pregnancy enhance a baby’s brain development.

Just as Mom permanently affects her fetus, new science suggests that the fetus does the same for Mom. Fetal movement, even when the mother is unaware of it, raises her heart rate and her skin conductivity, signals of emotion, and perhaps of prenatal preparation for mother-child bonding.

Fetal cells pass through the placenta into the mother’s bloodstream. “It’s exciting to think about whether those cells are attracted to certain regions in the brain” that may be involved in optimizing maternal behavior, said Glynn.

Glynn cautions that most research on the maternal brain has been conducted with rodents, whose pregnancies differ enormously from women’s; more research on human mothers is needed. But she is optimistic that a more comprehensive picture of the persisting brain changes wrought by pregnancy will yield interventions to help at-risk mothers do better by their babies and themselves.

Read more: http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/12/22/how-pregnancys-hormonal-flood-affects-a-womans-brain/32907.html

While each of these phenomena had been investigated in earlier studies, the two had not been examined together in a single study. Researchers at New York University analyzed data for three sets of women: 6,874 who were pregnant when a major earthquake occurred in Chile in 2005 and who lived near enough to be affected by that event; 7,115 women whose pregnancies coincided with those of the first group but who were not affected by the quake; and a control group of 3,649 women whose pregnancies occurred during the same nine months as those of the first group but a full calendar year earlier.

Earthquakes, the paper notes, are regarded as extremely stressful events for humans.

The data revealed a substantial decrease in gestational age (the number of weeks from the mother’s last menstrual period, in this case measuring how many weeks “old” the baby is at birth) and an increase in preterm deliveries among women who were pregnant with female babies and who experienced the earthquake during the second or third month of their pregnancy. No such association was found for those pregnant with male babies. That result was striking, the authors note, because among the general population, male babies are more likely to be delivered preterm than females.

And, as suspected, the ratio of male to female babies born to the group exposed to the earthquake during the third month of pregnancy was smaller than that for the other groups.

The authors note that their work could aid in the development of interventions to prevent preterm births, which can have lasting and serious health consequences for babies.

The study was published Thursday in the journal Human Reproduction.

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-checkup/post/stress-in-early-pregnancy-linked-to-premature-births-more-female-babies/2010/12/20/gIQArhHPgO_blog.html