Smarty Gene: Breast-fed kids show DNA-aided IQ boost
by Bruce Bower
Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in deciphering the genetics of intelligence. Ironically, they did it by accounting for a key environmental factor.Breast-feeding boosts children's IQs by 6 to 7 points over the IQs of kids who weren't breast-fed, but only if the breast-fed youngsters have inherited a gene variant associated with enhanced chemical processing of mothers' milk, reports a team led by psychologist Avshalom Caspi of King's College London.
The new finding supports the controversial hypothesis that fatty acids in breast milk enhance newborn babies' brain development.
Moreover, the results demonstrate that intelligence researchers must examine how children's genetic natures interact with the ways in which they're nurtured.
Continue reading at: http://sciencenews.org/articles/20071110/fob1.asp
I liked this quote at the end:
Adds psychologist Jeremy R. Gray of Yale University, "An IQ advantage of 6 to 7 points is unquestionably large enough to have a real-world impact on individuals."
I visited a website that rants about the unsafety of homebirth. I hadn't been there for about six months. Nothing has changed. I added comments about what the baby feels and experiences at birth and people got so jiggy -- I advocated for gentle, respectful treatment of the baby. WOW, mother's of NICU babies went ballistic, folks got rude and ridiculing, and basically saying that babies don't remember so it doesn't matter. You'd think I'd said the world is round.
Really, it's such a spiritual experience to go that blog. I always think of Gandhi:
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
Although winning doesn't really sound like something Gandhi would seek. Did he really say that?
Anyway, that's how the folks who trash homebirth, natural birth and who support cesarean as a less painful, healthier way for humans to be born, and adamantly resist and attack one for the concept of the human baby being a fully conscious, aware, and learning baby act when one introduces research or logic to the contrary. Contrary to what they are doing, making a living doing, or experienced as a patient. They got so jiggy about me saying that the baby could be treated gently and with respect EVEN if s/he needed to have an intervention. They even said that there is no research to support prenatal learning. They must live in caves! I suggested they Google: fetal programming and development and suggested they look at the mainstream researchers, Janet Dieprieto, PhD, Peter Nathanielsz, MD (OB), PhD (Vet), and Peter Hepper, PhD (Ireland).
I remember when breastfeeding was as opposed with the same flimsy science that convinced women to use formula, while the logic and science that said Mother Nature or Divine Design has provided what the human baby needs was vehemently denied by the medical caregivers. I breastfed my son in 1975 when it was not at cool to do so. They kept my baby from me for hours until my family was gone. Two nurses tried to talk me out of it. They said they had already fed him and he took the bottle just fine. Something deep rises up within me (and the B word too) just writing that. How did they get the "right" and the "power" to impose their MISbeliefs upon MY BABY!?!? It is not to be taken lightly since we once again know as a society that breastfeeding is so critical. The first feeding primes the baby's stomach. HOW DARE they take that away from him. WHY do we continue to allow medical caregivers to perpetrate their opinions and beliefs that are shown over and over and over to be NON-Science based? And, that translate into disrespectful, dangerous, and violating treatment of our babies?
Oprah and everyone else is talking about how the US compares in math and science. One woman on Oprah said that this is the number one issue? Yet, Oprah continues to support epidural .. with all the research that shows it is dangerous and WITHOUT any longitudinal or retrospective research to show it is safe and without consequence. Is the education rate of failure corresponding to the increasing rates of induction, epidural, and cesarean? Doesn't anyone in power THINK and connect?
We are told that induction is safe, drugs are safe, even Fentanyl and other narcotics, during labor and birth, but we should not use them at other times during pregnancy. We are told that cesarean birth is safe for the mother and baby and yet, the obstetric field will not do any long term research. Those doing the research are psychologists and their credibility -- because they are psychologists -- is discredited by medicine, and the women they violated, who must believe, believe, believe that whatever was done to them was done for the right reasons.
Someday, the majority will see that the human being does remember every experience, including birth, and that we can be gentle and respectful doing lifesaving maneuvers. But will we ever be able to just say: Babies are emotionally, physically, and spiritually impacted by their birth experience? How's come we can't seem to overcome the medical power and control and just say it -- poor treatment of the human by doctors and nurses at birth causes X, Y, Z. Like, medicine causes low IQ.
My friend, Rich concurs,
How about a new headline: "Medical research demonstrates IQ cost of hubris and recklessness in pediatric practice".
Or "90% offormula fed children would have higher IQ's if their parents had ignored a century of conventional medical wisdom". The admission that "formula-fed infants typically received no fatty acids in their diets" is an indictment of american quack pediatric/industrial medicine if there ever was one.
This is just one more in a long stream of findings demonstratingthe immunological, nutritional, psychological and now intellectual deficits suffered by formula-fed babies. Yet there is no outcry, no call for banning over-the-counter formula, no push for facilities to breast-feed and co-habitate in the workplace, no press releases attempting to undo the effects of over a century of medical trivialization and denigration of breast feeding. No doubt children are better off not being held by their mothers anyway. I'm sure sensory deprivation does wonders for their growing brains.
http://www.violence.de/tv/rockabye.html
It wasn't so long ago that new mothers were routinely given injectionsto dry up their breasts. Now at least they can sometimes breastfeed in public without going to jail. Will wonders never cease?Perhaps some day there will be room for human nature in medicalideology. That is, if they can think of a way to make it profitable.
The Other Side of the Glass
Part One was officially released June 2013 in digital distribution format.
To purchase to to www.theothersideoftheglass.com
If you were a donor and want to download your copy send an email to theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com.
The trailer
Friday, August 22, 2008
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"Soft is the heart of a child. Do not harden it."
A public awareness reminder that things that happen behind the scenes, out of our sight, aren't always as rosy as we might think them to be. Perhaps its a restaurant cook who accidentally drops your burger
on the floor before placing it on the bun and serving it to you. Here it's an overworked apathetic (pathetic) nurse giving my newborn daughter her first bath.
Please comment and rate this video, so as to insure that it is viewed as widely as possible, perhaps to prevent other such abuse. -- The mother who posted this YouTube. How NOT to wash a baby on YouTube
Are you going to try to tell me that "babies don't remember?" There is no difference to this baby's experience and the imprinting of her nervous system/brain and one that is held and cleaned by the mother or father either at the hospital or at home?
By the way, this is probably NOT the baby's first bath. The nurse is ungloved. Medical staff protocol is that they can't handle a baby ungloved until is has been bathed (scrubbed if you've seen it) because the baby is a BIO-HAZARD -- for them. Never mind that the bio-hazard IS the baby's first line of defense against hospital germs.
Missouri Senator Louden Speaks
Finally, A Birth Film for Fathers
Part One of the "The Other Side of the Glass: Finally, A Birth Film for and about Men" was released June, 2013.
Through presentation of the current research and stories of fathers, the routine use of interventions are questioned. How we protect and support the physiological need of the human newborn attachment sequence is the foundation for creating safe birth wherever birth happens.
Based on knowing that babies are sentient beings and the experience of birth is remembered in the body, mind, and soul, fathers are asked to research for themselves what is best for their partner and baby and to prepare to protect their baby.
The film is designed for midwives, doulas, and couples, particularly fathers to work with their caregivers. Doctors and nurses in the medical environment are asked to "be kind" to the laboring, birthing baby, and newborn. They are called to be accountable for doing what science has been so clear about for decades. The mother-baby relationship is core for life. Doctors and nurses and hospital caregivers and administrators are asked to create protocols that protect the mother-baby relationship.
Men are asked to join together to address the vagaries of the medical system that harm their partner, baby and self in the process of the most defining moments of their lives. Men are asked to begin to challenge the system BEFORE they even conceive babies as there is no way to be assured of being able to protect his loved ones once they are in the medical machine, the war zone, on the conveyor belt -- some of the ways that men describe their journey into fatherhood in the medicine culture.
Donors can email theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com to get a digital copy.
Through presentation of the current research and stories of fathers, the routine use of interventions are questioned. How we protect and support the physiological need of the human newborn attachment sequence is the foundation for creating safe birth wherever birth happens.
Based on knowing that babies are sentient beings and the experience of birth is remembered in the body, mind, and soul, fathers are asked to research for themselves what is best for their partner and baby and to prepare to protect their baby.
The film is designed for midwives, doulas, and couples, particularly fathers to work with their caregivers. Doctors and nurses in the medical environment are asked to "be kind" to the laboring, birthing baby, and newborn. They are called to be accountable for doing what science has been so clear about for decades. The mother-baby relationship is core for life. Doctors and nurses and hospital caregivers and administrators are asked to create protocols that protect the mother-baby relationship.
Men are asked to join together to address the vagaries of the medical system that harm their partner, baby and self in the process of the most defining moments of their lives. Men are asked to begin to challenge the system BEFORE they even conceive babies as there is no way to be assured of being able to protect his loved ones once they are in the medical machine, the war zone, on the conveyor belt -- some of the ways that men describe their journey into fatherhood in the medicine culture.
Donors can email theothersideoftheglassfilm@gmail.com to get a digital copy.
Buy the film at www.theothersideoftheglass.com.
The film focuses on the male baby, his journey from the womb to the world and reveals healing and integrating the mother, father, and baby's wounded birth experience. The film is about the restoring of our families, society, and world through birthing loved, protected, and nurtured males (and females, of course). It's about empowering males to support the females to birth humanity safely, lovingly, and consciously.
Finally, a birth film for fathers.
The film focuses on the male baby, his journey from the womb to the world and reveals healing and integrating the mother, father, and baby's wounded birth experience. The film is about the restoring of our families, society, and world through birthing loved, protected, and nurtured males (and females, of course). It's about empowering males to support the females to birth humanity safely, lovingly, and consciously.
Finally, a birth film for fathers.
What People Are Saying About the FIlm
Well, I finally had a chance to check out the trailer and .. wow! It's nice that they're acknowledging the father has more than just cursory rights (of course mom's rights are rarely acknowledged either) and it's great that they're bringing out the impact of the experience on the newborn, but I'm really impressed that they're not shying away from the political side.
They are rightly calling what happens in every American maternity unit, every day, by its rightful name - abuse. Abuse of the newborn, abuse of the parents and their rights, abuse of the supposedly sacrosanct ethical principal of patient autonomy and the medico-legal doctrine of informed consent, which has been long ago discarded in all but name. I love it!
In the immortal words of the "shrub", "bring it on!" This film needs to be shown and if I can help facilitate or promote it, let me know.
Father in Asheville, NC
Thanks for sharing this. It was very touching to me. I thought of my brother-in-law standing on the other side of the glass when my sister had to have a C-section with her first child because the doctor was missing his golf date. I'll never forget his pacing back and forth and my realizing that he was already a father, even though he hadn't been allowed to be with his son yet.
Margaret, Columbia, MO
They are rightly calling what happens in every American maternity unit, every day, by its rightful name - abuse. Abuse of the newborn, abuse of the parents and their rights, abuse of the supposedly sacrosanct ethical principal of patient autonomy and the medico-legal doctrine of informed consent, which has been long ago discarded in all but name. I love it!
In the immortal words of the "shrub", "bring it on!" This film needs to be shown and if I can help facilitate or promote it, let me know.
Father in Asheville, NC
OMG'ess, I just saw the trailer and am in tears. This is so needed. I watch over and over and over as fathers get swallowed in the fear of hospitals birth practice. I need a tool like this to help fathers see how very vital it is for them to protect their partner and baby. I am torn apart every time I see a father stand back and chew his knuckle while his wife is essentially assaulted or his baby is left to lie there screaming.
Please send me more info!!!!
Carrie Hankins
CD(DONA), CCCE, Aspiring Midwife
720-936-3609
Thanks for sharing this. It was very touching to me. I thought of my brother-in-law standing on the other side of the glass when my sister had to have a C-section with her first child because the doctor was missing his golf date. I'll never forget his pacing back and forth and my realizing that he was already a father, even though he hadn't been allowed to be with his son yet.
Margaret, Columbia, MO
In case you don't find me here
Soon, I'll be back to heavy-duty editing and it will be quiet here again. I keep thinking this blog is winding down, and then it revives. It is so important to me.
I wish I'd kept a blog of my journey with this film this past 10 months. It's been amazing.
I have a new blog address for the film, and will keep a journal of simple reporting of the journey for the rest of the film.
www.theothersideoftheglassthefilm.blogspot.com
I'll be heading east this week to meet with a group of men. I plan to post pictures and clips on the film blog.
I'll keep up here when I can -- when I learn something juicy, outrageous, or inspiring related to making birth safer for the birthing baby.
I wish I'd kept a blog of my journey with this film this past 10 months. It's been amazing.
I have a new blog address for the film, and will keep a journal of simple reporting of the journey for the rest of the film.
www.theothersideoftheglassthefilm.blogspot.com
I'll be heading east this week to meet with a group of men. I plan to post pictures and clips on the film blog.
I'll keep up here when I can -- when I learn something juicy, outrageous, or inspiring related to making birth safer for the birthing baby.
Review of the film
Most of us were born surrounded by people who had no clue about how aware and feeling we were. This trailer triggers a lot of emotions for people if they have not considered the baby's needs and were not considered as a baby. Most of us born in the US were not. The final film will include detailed and profound information about the science-based, cutting-edge therapies for healing birth trauma.
The full film will have the interviews of a wider spectrum of professionals and fathers, and will include a third birth, at home, where the caregivers do a necessary intervention, suctioning, while being conscious of the baby.
The final version will feature OBs, RNs, CNMs, LM, CPM, Doulas, childbirth educators, pre and perinatal psychologists and trauma healing therapists, physiologists, neurologists, speech therapists and lots and lots of fathers -- will hopefully be done in early 2009.
The final version will include the science needed to advocated for delayed cord clamping, and the science that shows when a baby needs to be suctioned and addresses other interventions. Experts in conscious parenting will teach how to be present with a sentient newborn in a conscious, gentle way -- especially when administering life-saving techniques.
The goal is to keep the baby in the mother's arms so that the baby gets all of his or her placental blood and to avoid unnecessary, violating, and abusive touch and interactions. When we do that, whether at home or hospital, with doctor or midwife, the birth is safe for the father. The "trick" for birthing men and women is how to make it happen in the hospital.
The full film will have the interviews of a wider spectrum of professionals and fathers, and will include a third birth, at home, where the caregivers do a necessary intervention, suctioning, while being conscious of the baby.
The final version will feature OBs, RNs, CNMs, LM, CPM, Doulas, childbirth educators, pre and perinatal psychologists and trauma healing therapists, physiologists, neurologists, speech therapists and lots and lots of fathers -- will hopefully be done in early 2009.
The final version will include the science needed to advocated for delayed cord clamping, and the science that shows when a baby needs to be suctioned and addresses other interventions. Experts in conscious parenting will teach how to be present with a sentient newborn in a conscious, gentle way -- especially when administering life-saving techniques.
The goal is to keep the baby in the mother's arms so that the baby gets all of his or her placental blood and to avoid unnecessary, violating, and abusive touch and interactions. When we do that, whether at home or hospital, with doctor or midwife, the birth is safe for the father. The "trick" for birthing men and women is how to make it happen in the hospital.
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