The McCarrison Society - NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

Article Index
NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition
Chairman's comments
GHB Special Report On The McCarrison Society
GHB:Report by Conference Organiser Rev Simon House, MA
GHB: Preconception to late adolescence:
GHB: From past to present: evolution and epigenetics
GHB: CLEAVE LECTURE Nutrition, the brain and mental ill health
GHB: Our changing diet; deficits and disorders
GHB: Genomic imprinting for brain development and behaviour
GHB: 'Brainfoods': Modulating brain structure and function
GHB: The effects of maternal anxiety or stress during pregnancy
GHB: Cornerstones in the Psychobiological Development of Mankind:
GHB: A psycho-soma integration perspective
GHB: 'New Parenting', psychotherapy, prenatal
GHB: Attention deficit disorders
GHB: Priorities in Research Funding
GHB:Into the future; avoiding the cost of folly
GHB: References
News
Mind What You Eat
McCarrison meeting with Sustain
Future Events

Page 5 of 22

GHB: Preconception to late adolescence: key impacts on brain development & function.

Simon House MA – McCarrison Society & ISPPM, scientific writer, presented an overview of some of the most powerful effects of nurture in the 20-year span from before conception to late adolescence. He showed that the nutritional health of both parents before conception was even more important than the maternal nutrition status in pregnancy, quoting the Dutch hunger winter of 1944-5.

This is well illustrated by Hungarian double-blind controlled trial1 of preconception supplements, including for instance folic acid (double the normal dose), zinc and vitamin B12, involving 4000 women. There were 6 neural tube defects in the control group, with none at all in the trial group. Under-nutrition can prevent the neural tube from sealing properly, which may not only cause spina bifida and cleft palate but could also leave the seal for the brain hemispheres less than perfect, and the higher and lower regions for the brain inadequately demarcated. If this led to poorer development of connections the brain’s ability to transmit signals properly could be impaired. Such is a feature of autism, ADHD and behavioural problems. One problem is when the rational mind fails to communicate effectively enough with the emotional/motor to control spontaneous actions, and this could spring from poor formation of the first cells at the neural tube stage.

With imaging of both structure and activity of regions and connections in the brain, the flaws and their origins are becoming clearer, their prevention more and more practicable. Foresight Preconception2 have shown that in 9 out of 10 cases of reproductive difficulty, including apparent infertility, they can guide a responsive couple to a fully healthy baby through infection and toxin control combined with nutrition analyses.

Emotional factors such as shock also leave their mark. After the 1994 Californian earthquake a survey showed that significantly more mothers shocked in the first trimester had premature babies than those further advanced in pregnancy. This could well be due to the gradual build-up of shock-repressant corticotrophin-releasing-hormone which only begins in the second trimester. On the other hand it was children in the third trimester at 9/11 that later turned out to be more stressed than those less advanced at the time. The emotional effects of forceps delivery combined with early separation from the parent correlates with a four times the risk of a child being criminally violent at the age of 18.

Further changes in the brain are between 3 and 5 years, when the neocortex is becoming effective, and most previous memories are left behind. Around puberty there is pruning and redevelopment to suit the way the brain is becoming used. Times of rapid growth pose a problem. The third trimester when the brain, already large, is making huge demands on the mother’s resources for the omega3 DHA, often leaving her deprived and prone to depression. In late adolescence the problem, particularly in males, is due to competition from the large body’s rapid growth, ubiquitously demanding DHA at some risk to the brain. Consequently this is a peak time for violent behaviour. Throughout these times it is not only nutritional nurture, but emotional nurture too, which can make or break: raising a person who is loving and peaceful, or one who is deprived and liable to compulsions and violence. We know now the ways to be tough on the causes of crime. It is just a matter of the will and the readiness for the relatively low cost of generating healthy brains.

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