Friday 1 March 2019

Five Fruits To Avoid During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is the most sensitive period for a woman and for her unborn child. A pregnant woman ought to be very cautious during pregnancy to ensure appropriate wellbeing of the unborn child. Once you are pregnant, your body experiences an ocean of change from hormone overproduction to stress. When your body changes to accommodate the embryo, it is fundamental that you take satisfactory care of yourself by taking after a strict diet regimen which incorporates natural products, vegetables, and micronutrients.

It is fundamental that you select a healthy diet as it can affect the wellbeing of your child as well as your pregnancy. At the same time, there are certain foods and fruits that are not suggested for pregnant ladies.

1. Pineapple
Pineapple ranks high on the list of fruits to maintain a strategic distance from during pregnancy first trimester. This is because it can cause you to encounter sharp uterine contractions which in turn can cause miscarriage.

2. Grapes
Grapes are best avoided when you are pregnant. Whereas specialists are yet to come out with a reliable stand on pregnancy and grapes, it is presently widely accepted that resveratrol a compound they contain, can be harmful to pregnant mothers.

3. Tamarind
Tamarind contains high amounts of vitamin C which in abundance can suppress the production of progesterone in your body. Lowered levels of progesterone, can lead to premature delivery, pre-term birth and may even lead to cell damage in the embryo.


4Papaya
Papaya can cause your body temperature to shoot up, which isn't great once you are pregnant. Separated from this, the natural product is wealthy in latex which can lead to uterine withdrawals, dying and indeed a miscarriage.

5. Sesame seeds
It is essential that you just dodge consuming sesame seeds in any form during the first trimester of your pregnancy. Sesame seeds are broadly accepted to cause uterine contractions so devouring the same would lead you to experience sharp discomfort, pain, and may indeed lead to your uterus throwing the embryo out. 

Once you are pregnant you should always consult your doctor or nutrition expert and plan your diet accordingly.

Sunday 17 February 2019

IS IT SAFE TO EAT FISH IN PREGNANCY?

The FDA suggests that women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning to conceive consume more fish. It is recommended that women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or plan on becoming pregnant consume fish that's low in methylmercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Fish have vital nutrients including omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, protein and minerals such as iron. These nutrients are essential, as they stimulate healthy fetal, infant, and childhood development.

Benefits of Eating Fish during Pregnancy

  1. Omega-3 DHA: Omega 3 is one of the most important nutrients that we need during pregnancy.  Omega 3 is necessary for the growth of your baby’s eyes and brain, and the absence of omega 3 is believed to increase the risk of post-natal depression. In high-risk pregnancies, a higher intake of long chain omega 3 has reduced the risk of premature births.
  2. Protein: Protein is necessary to build a baby’s skin, muscle, hair, and bones. Fish and shellfish, dairy like cottage cheese, eggs, beans, peanut butter, and are all good sources of protein.
  3. Vitamin D: Vitamin D helps the body absorb nutrients like calcium, which is necessary to build the baby’s bones, teeth, heart, nerves, and muscles as well as keeps moms’ bones and teeth strong.  Vitamin D may also help reduce the chance of high blood pressure during pregnancy.
  4. Iron: Iron helps in carrying oxygen from a woman’s bloodstream to her baby.  Iron also helps to keep the mother’s immunity strong. 

Best Fish to Eat During Pregnancy


  • Salmon Steak
  • Canned Tuna: Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding can consume all types of tuna, as part of a variety of 2-3 servings of seafood each week.
  • Trout: Trout is also incredibly rich in omega 3 fat
    s, and yet it is relatively low in mercury. As trout is usually eaten fresh, you'll need to be careful of listeria.
  • Canned Sardines: Canned Sardines are high in salt, so be careful if you have high blood pressure. However, they are such a rich source of omega 3 and they have one of the lowest amounts of mercury.



Thursday 24 January 2019

Mediterranean diet for Pregnancy

Building up a healthy eating pattern and weight could be a great way to begin for women who are looking to conceive. When you’re pregnant your body needs additional vitamins and minerals to ensure that you get the nutrients both you and your developing baby need.

For a healthy pregnancy, you need to consume a variety of foods, which involves the right amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, as well as consuming many vegetables, and fruits. And following a Mediterranean diet - which involves eating plenty of fresh, non-starchy produce - has been found to be beneficial for pregnant women.

The Mediterranean diet is characterized by a high content of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, vegetables, and nuts. This healthy diet pattern has been associated with lower obesity and cardiometabolic risk in adults.


According to a study, it was found that pregnant women with higher intake of the Mediterranean diet had a 32% lower risk of having children with accelerated growth patterns than those who did not follow such diet.

Particularly- during pregnancy, the Mediterranean diet has been related to
• Low risk of gestational diabetes
• Decreased risk of pregnancy weight gain
• Lower obesity and blood pressure in resulting children when aged 4-7 years
• Decreased risk of allergy, eczema, and asthma in resulting children


How to make your meal plan more Mediterranean

Going the Mediterranean way is one of the best things you can do for your health, particularly waistline and heart health.
Here are six simple steps to help you get started or make your diet more Mediterranean.

• Include plenty of plant-based foods such as fruits, vegetables - broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, kale, carrots, onions, cucumbers, apples, bananas, pears, oranges, berries, etc - in your diet.
• Replace your butter with healthy fats from olive oil, nuts, and avocados.
• Eat poultry and Fish twice a week.
• Include legumes and whole grains in your daily diet.
• Flavor your meals with spices and herbs such as garlic, basil, mint, cinnamon, and pepper while cutting back on salt.
• Try to limit red meat to no more than a few times a month

Saturday 19 January 2019

Does Caffeine Intake During Pregnancy Leads to Miscarriage?

Caffeine consumption by pregnant women can increase the chance of miscarriage. And, it doesn't matter on the off chance that the caffeine comes from coffee, tea, soda or hot chocolate.

A couple's chance of miscarriage may arise when the woman or man devours more than two caffeinated drinks a day within the weeks leading up to conception. Similarly, women who drank more than two daily caffeinated beverages amid the primary seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to miscarry.



Caffeine is a stimulant and a diuretic. It increases your blood pressure and heart rate, both of which are not suggested amid pregnancy. Caffeine too increases the frequency of urination. This causes a decrease in your body liquid levels and can lead to dehydration.

Caffeine crosses the placenta to your child. Your baby’s metabolism is still developing and cannot completely metabolize the caffeine. Any sum of caffeine can moreover cause changes in your baby’s sleep pattern or normal movement pattern within the later stages of pregnancy Some studies have shown a connection between high levels of caffeine utilization and delayed conception.

In 2008, two studies on the impacts of caffeine related to miscarriage showed essentially diverse results. In one study it was found that women who consume 200mg or more of caffeine daily are twice as likely to have a miscarriage as those who do not consume any caffeine. In another study, there was no increased risk in women who drank a minimal amount of coffee daily (between 200-350mg per day.)


  
Women planning to become pregnant should take folic acid, a type of B vitamin, and avoid alcohol and tobacco smoke. Taking a multivitamin really helps. Not all multivitamins are secure and most specialists suggest a specially formulated prenatal vitamin.

There has been debate around whether caffeine causes unsuccessful labors or whether women who impulse stop drinking caffeine early in pregnancy have a healthier pregnancy, to begin with.

Sunday 4 November 2018

Erythroblastosis Fetalis

The human body is domestic to trillions of red blood cells, also known as RBCs or erythrocytes. These blood cells carry oxygen, iron, and many other nutrients to the appropriate places in the body
There are four major blood types: A, B, O, and AB. Another blood type is called Rh (protein in the blood). The human body is domestic to trillions of red blood cells, also known as RBCs or erythrocytes.  Most individuals are Rh-positive; they have Rh factor. Rh-negative individuals do not have it. Rh factor is acquired through genes.

In case you're Rh-negative and your child is Rh-positive, your body will respond to the baby's blood as a foreign substance. It'll generate antibodies (proteins) against the baby's blood. These antibodies more often do not cause problems during the first pregnancy. But Rh incompatibility may cause issues in later pregnancies, in case the baby is Rh-positive. This is because the antibodies remain in your body once they have formed. The antibodies can cross the placenta and lyse, or break apart, the red blood cells of the fetus resulting in erythroblastosis fetalis.

Erythroblastosis fetalis moreover called the hemolytic disease of the newborn, sort of anemia in which the red blood cells (erythrocytes) of a baby are destroyed in a maternal immune response coming about from a blood group incompatibility between the fetus and its mother. This incompatibility arises when the baby acquires a certain blood factor from the father that's absent in the mother.



Symptoms of Erythroblastosis Fetalis
  1. Babies appear swollen, pale, or jaundiced after birth.
  2. The baby has a low RBC count.
  3. Babies also experience a condition known as hydrops fetalis, where fluid starts to accumulate in spaces where the fluid is normally not present. This includes spaces in the: abdomen, heart,   and lungs.
Rh sensitivity is likely to develop during labor, the chance of the disease developing in consequent Rh-positive pregnancies increases. The risk can be diminished in case the mother gets infusions of Rh immunoglobulin, which devastates fetal RBCs in her bloodstream, during her first pregnancy. The baby also is secured from Rh hemolytic disease in case an ABO blood group incompatibility exists concurrently; protection is conferred by ABO antibodies, which devastate fetal blood cells in the maternal circulation before the mother creates Rh sensitivity. Fetal-maternal incompatibilities inside the ABO blood group alone are more common than those of the Rh sort, but the immune response is usually much less extreme unless the fetus is type A and the mother type O.

Saturday 27 October 2018

PAINKILLERS IN PREGNANCY MAY INFLUENCE BABY'S FUTURE FERTILITY

Women who take painkillers amid pregnancy might be adversely influencing the future fertility of the unborn child and their descendants. Certain medications, counting paracetamol, ought to be used with caution amid pregnancy.
Researchers exposed Paracetamol and Ibuprofen on samples of human fetal testes and ovaries. They found similar effects utilizing a few diverse experimental approaches, counting lab tests on human tissue tests and animal studies.


Human tissues exposed to either medicate for one week in a dish had reduced numbers of germ cells. Ovaries exposed to paracetamol for one week had more than 40% less egg-producing cells. After ibuprofen introduction, the number of cells was nearly halved.
The study also indicated that painkiller exposure during development could have effects on unborn boys too. They found testicular tissue exposed to painkillers in a culture dish had around a quarter fewer sperm-producing cells after exposure to paracetamol or ibuprofen.

The effects of painkiller treatment on mice that carried grafts of human null testicular tissue were also observed. After one day of treatment with a human-equivalent dose of paracetamol, the number of sperm-producing cells in the graft tissue had dropped by 17% and by around 30% after a week.

Such reductions are detrimental for girls as they produce all their eggs while still in their mother’s womb. In normal circumstances, baby girls usually have about a million eggs at birth. But at puberty only about 300,000 remains. Thereafter, a huge proportion is shed monthly when women have their periods until they are depleted from the age of 50 when women hit menopause.

Therefore, being born with fewer eggs could lead to early menopause, thus making conception elusive for otherwise young women. The ability of women to have children decreases as they age due to the deteriorating number and quality of eggs. 
For unborn boys, the study found that the painkillers led them to have 25 percent fewer sperm-producing cells. Having low sperm counts is a major cause of male infertility. This is because a man usually has to produce millions of sperms so as to enhance chances of just one lucky one fertilising an egg.



For pain relief, paracetamol (used in moderation) is recommended as a safer choice compared to ibuprofen. This is because taking ibuprofen or other null anti-inflammatory drugs in the last few weeks of pregnancy has been linked to low levels of amniotic fluid which can cause problems with how the baby grows and how well the lungs develop.

If volumes of the fluid decrease during the first trimester of pregnancy, and the early part of the second trimester, then the risk of miscarriage will increase. And in the most serious cases, low amniotic fluid can also cause a baby to be stillborn.
There are also concerns that some medications may delay or prolong labor. And if used within a week of delivery, they heighten bleeding risk which is life-threatening for both the mother and her child.

Saturday 20 October 2018

FISH OIL MAY ARREST BREAST CANCER CELLS GROWTH

A recent study on mice gives further proof that a diet high in omega-3 fats may delay the improvement and spread of breast cancer. Fatty acids stop delayed tumors from shaping and blocked the cancerous cells from spreading to other organs in mice. The analysts speculate that this may be due to the way in which omega-3 fatty acids support the body's immune and anti-inflammatory systems.

Two groups of adult female mice have been fed a liquid diet for which the calorie count and the fat percentage were the same. The striking distinction was that one diet contained plant oils wealthy in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, and the other diet contained fish oil rich in omega-3 fatty acids. After some days, the mice were then injected with 4T1 breast cancer cells that cause aggressive tumors to develop within the breast.


It was found the chance that the breast cancer cells would take hold in the breast glands of the adult female mice was significantly lower in those on the omega 3-diet. Tumors took longer to begin developing in these mice, and this had an impact on their size. After 35 days, the tumors detected in their breasts were 50 percent smaller than those that developed within the omega 6-group. 

The probability of the cancerous cells developing and spreading to other organs in the omega-3 group was moreover lower and these mice survived longer than those on the omega-6 diet. In fact a few of the omega-3 fed mice showed up to never develop breast cancer.
More T-cells were found within the tissue of the mice within the omega-3 group than in the omega-6 group, and these connected with dying tumor cells since T-cells are white blood cells that play a part in strengthening the immune system against tumors. The mice fed an omega-3 diet moreover had less inflammation.


According to researchers, this might mean that a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids helps to suppress the type of inflammation that can trigger the quick advancement and spread of tumors as well as advance T-cell reactions to tumors. This does not mean that an omega-3 diet might summarily prevent breast cancer tumors from shaping inside and out.

Studies also showed how eating fish oil-based diets during pregnancy and as a child markedly suppresses the development and spread of breast cancer.