Throughout years of studies, it has been often noted that the diet and attitude of women who are expecting a baby have direct impact on the way the fetus develops and later the child; now, a new study suggests that pregnant women's stress levels could also be a cause for concern later on for the unborn child.
Often, women who are expecting children are advised by their doctors to keep at peace, though mostly for their own state of mind; while it had been often thought that pregnant women's stress levels could affect the later development of their children, it's only now that the theory seems to be confirmed.
According to Science Daily, the study regarding pregnant women's stress levels and their effects on their children was made by scientists from the University of Cambridge, is entitled "Corticosterone alters materno-foetal glucose partitioning and insulin signaling in pregnant mice," and was published recently on the Journal of Physiology.
As Medical Daily reports, the pregnant women stress study saw the researchers see how pregnant mice's stress levels affected the growth of their fetuses: 51 mice studied were given glucocorticoid, a natural stress hormone, during pregnancy, while a control group, composed of 74 pregnant mice, wasn't given anything.
Help Me Out Doc reports that the results were staggering: those mice mothers with higher stress levels ate more, though they reduced their placenta's abilities to carry their body's glucose to the fetuses.
"Together with previous work, the findings show that maternal glucocorticoids regulate fetal nutrition," said Dr. Owen Vaughan, the leading author of the pregnant women stress study, in a press release. "Higher glucocorticoid hormone levels in the mother (as seen in stressful conditions) can reduce glucose transport across the placenta and lead to a decrease in fetal weight."
