Mom's Stress Isn't Trivial

It's the time of year to pull out the pile of research that I've collected about how stress affects the human body.  Next month I have to be prepared to articulate eight hours of lecture to chiropractors about not only how it changes us, but also what we can do to help our patients reduce the effects.  There are many results of stress that are startling to those that haven't studied the subject, but some of the most shocking deal with the consequences of stress during pregnancy.

Men and women are different, plain and simple.  From a physiological viewpoint, there are certain reactions that are predominantly male and others that are female.  There are certain conditions that are more prevalent in one sex than the other.  In regards to stress, this holds true as well.  Men and women react differently to stress.  They have the same basic response, but how the body ends up expressing itself is different.  There is both a masculine and a feminine reaction to stress.

Women generally have a slower, but exaggerated response to stress, taking longer to start, but secreting higher levels of hormones that stick around longer.  They tend to retain their memory function better during stressful events, but stress disrupts their sex hormones more than men.  While men feel a "fight or flight" reaction, women are more prone to "tend and befriend".  Women also exhibit more ruminative thinking, where they rewind the event over and over.  There are significant differences in stress response between the sexes, and it relates to how their hormones are supposed to work in the body.

In the lecture, after I've described the different reactions, I discuss how the stress reaction changes over time, starting with prenatal exposure.  Here are two statements that I think need to be shouted from the loudest media outlet available:

"Prenatal stress exposure may pre-program the brain to increased susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disorders" and "Prenatal stress exposure to males causes physiological and stress reaction feminization". (links to the full text articles are at the end of this blog)

In plain English, that means that if mom is stressed, especially during the early part of her pregnancy, the baby can suffer life long consequences, including an increased risk for conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.  In addition, if the baby is male, they likely will develop a physiology that is more female than male, and their reactions to stress will follow in that female mold instead of following a traditional male pattern.

Do we really want our little boys to end up physiologically like little girls?  Does anyone want their kids to end up with a lifetime of emotional suffering?  I would hope the answers to both questions are a resounding NO!  Then why are we not telling women at their first prenatal visit that they need to do whatever they can to reduce their stress level for the health of their baby?  Why aren't expectant fathers, brothers, grandparents, and even coworkers being told that the best thing they can do for the new baby is reduce the stress level of the expectant mother?  Are we afraid that moms and dads can't handle the truth?  Granted, this research has only been out for a few years and was done on mice, but there is research that hits the media outlets almost before it is published in the journals and no researcher in their right mind would ever consider doing this on humans.  Extrapolation from animals to humans is all we have on pregnancy models.  I would think that at the very least magazines like Parenting, or Pregnancy and Newborns would have this as their cover story at least once a year.

Some research relies on word of mouth for its publicity, and it seems that prenatal stress exposure and its long term consequences is in that category.  For the health of not only our families, but of our society as a whole, I believe it is imperative that we help our pregnant mothers understand that they hold the long-term health of their baby in their minds.  Increasing their stress levels can have profound negative effects on their babies.  Anyone who cares about that baby should make it their priority to minimize the stress exposure of mom.  Mom's stress isn't trivial, it's paramount to the health of our future generation.

Look for future blogs that will give more information and insights into improving your health with natural health care.  You can also visit my website, like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.

The Neuroendocrinology of Stress: A Never Ending Story
Examining the Intersection of Sex and Stress in Modeling Neuropsychiatric Disorders