Nurturing the Brain Nutritionally and Emotionally from Before Conception to late Adolescence

Abstract

Sound nurture requires skills concerning nutrition and emotions, skills that are particularly important in key stages relating to brain development. We are recognizing more clearly the way that serious changes from our hunter-gatherer waterside lifestyle are affecting both our diet and our emotional relationships: first the changes a few hundred generations ago in the agricultural revolution: and more recently in the industrial revolution. These effects have been aggravated in the last century by excessively profit-driven intensive farming, and recently by intensive food-marketing--particularly to children. People are gradually becoming aware how very susceptible is the most vulnerable stage of the lifecycle, the reproductive phase. From long before fertilization and conception, parental nutrition affects a person's development and health for life. Controlled trials show marked effects of nurture on the brain's subsequent acuity. Brain structure throughout development has become visible through modern scans, and also brain activity and mental response. The neural tube, forming at around 3 weeks, if undernourished may be inadequately sealed and demarcated, leading to incomplete interconnection between brain regions. Results vary, but can emanate as: autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder (AD/HD); difficulty with relationships and social sense; poor self-control, with risk of violence. Evidence indicates that over 80% of current reproductive hazards, including infertility and malformations, might be prevented purely by sound all-round nurture. Between the embryonic stage and adulthood the brain makes several developmental spurts. Particularly during these spurts, sound nutrition and activity help the brain reach its full genetic potential for capacity, acuity, and connections between regions. From the beginning, hormones and nutrients, or their deficits, are setting gene-switches for life. Good bonding and feeding sets gene-switches positively; shock, stress or poor nutrition, negatively. Forceps delivery combined with serious early separation, correlates with over 4 times the risk of criminal violence by the age of 18. So disruptions of nurture set at risk not only body and brain but a person's very spirituality. Understanding of the biochemistry and epigenetics highlights our urgent need to learn from our evolutionary ways, not only of childbearing, but of a physically active life nourished by foods from the water and the wild.

Epigenetics in Developmental Disorder: ADHD and Endophenotypes

“…Between the stage of the embryo and adulthood, several developmental spurts occur in the brain during which activity and proper nutrition facilitate full brain capacity for synaptogenesis and neurogenesis. Malnutrition and adversity underlie the ‘gene-switching’ over lifetime: gene-switches are positive with adequate social bonding and good nutrients, but negative with shock/trauma, stress, or poor nutrition [23]. Marked neurodevelopmental influences of genomic imprinting set the stage for structural-physiological variation that affect cognition, emotion, and pathophysiology of ADHD (e.g., [24]).…”

Transgenerational healing

“…Still further gains in bearing healthy children would be expected from the mother's assured emotional nurture and appropriate birthing method and general reduction of poverty. [71][72][73] Although there is no standardised measure, Foresight's success for healthy babies seems to be some three times that of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) at a fraction of the price. Sometimes couples lacking success with IVF have proceeded to Foresight, doubling the success rate of IVF alone.…”

“…It has to be in keeping with the human brain's evolution. 73,143 Policy must counter sugar and salt, saturated and trans-fats that precipitated the rise in heart disease and are also associated with violence and crime. 150,151 Land animal production needs critical appraisal as it currently provides more calories from fat than protein.…”

Breastfeeding and Beyond

“…During the third trimester, the unborn baby's already large brain grows at double-speed, making huge demands on the mother's supply. If she is short, the foetus robs the mother's own cells, for instance of DHA, which should form over 10% of the brain [21]. Deprived of DHA, the mother will be prone to depression and her child's development compromised.…”