The Better Baby Book (25 page)

Do Your Best

Even though toxic chemicals abound in our modern society, millions of healthy children are born every year in spite of their exposure to these chemicals. We took the steps described here because it made sense, but we didn't obsess about what we couldn't control. The only thing we can do is our best!

To learn about the exact products we used during our pregnancies, visit
www.betterbabybook.com/household
.

14

Autism

As you may have heard on the news, autism is a fast-growing health problem in the United States and around the world. Data reported in 2007 indicated that one in ninety-one children in the United States is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. This means that more than 1 percent of our children have it. Almost 2 percent of our boys have it. The concern has been widely publicized as people around the country and the world search for causes so they can treat autistic kids and avoid autism in the future.

The debate about the cause of autism is charged with emotion and controversy because it has a big effect on families, and some companies could face liability claims larger than those from asbestos if certain materials are identified as causal factors. Although some physicians are very supportive of our approach to autism, there are others who believe that autism is caused by genetics only. We know that autism is related to each of the risk factors we mention, but there are few studies showing that avoiding those risk factors will result in autism-free children. We started at a higher risk level for having an autistic child, because Lana was almost forty and Dave has a family history of a mild form of autism called Asperger's syndrome, but by using our plan we were able to avoid autism in our children.

In fact, Dave grew up with many symptoms of Asperger's and ADHD before discovering the biochemistry behind his symptoms and reversing them years ago. For us as parents, avoiding autism was personal and motivated a lot of our early research. For our children, we wanted to eliminate anything and everything that might raise our risk. As scientists and researchers grounded in the real world, we know that it's nearly impossible to remove all risk, but we wanted to reduce it as much as we could.

We believe our program has a very high likelihood of reducing the risk of autism because it supports healthy immune function and reduces unhealthy inflammation, ensures proper nutritional intake, and avoids and eliminates toxins that are associated with autism risk. We are certain there is no single cause for every case of autism, but we believe that autism can—and has been—cured many times, and we believe it can be avoided by a prudent application of the principles outlined in our book. That said, although there are many studies supporting our recommendations, there is no double-blind study of our program in its entirety. We welcome the opportunity to conduct one, however.

After the research we conducted, and based on Lana's work as the medical director of a lab testing company interacting with integrative physicians across the country, we concluded that there are many triggers for autism but that in most cases it manifests as a neuroinflammatory condition affecting the myelin sheath of a baby's neurons.

We highlight the risk factors for autism in the following sections, and we cite our research each time so you can measure the strength of our conclusions for yourself.

Possible Causes of Autism

We have found that autism can be brought on by toxic heavy metals, older parents, exposure to toxins in the womb (especially mycotoxins from molds), a stressful womb environment triggering changes in the sympathetic nervous system, some genetically modified foods, morphinelike substances in wheat and dairy, too much iron, vitamin D deficiency, and an imbalance in probiotics in the digestive tract. There is even some surprising—and potentially scary—early research indicating that electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation and fluorescent lighting may slightly increase the risks, and we know with certainty that these make some autism spectrum conditions worse. More research is needed here. CFL and fluorescent lights do not help people be healthier and may cause harm.

Even some elements of a baby's birth experience, like early cutting of the umbilical cord or inadequate contact with the mother in the first few minutes of life, can heighten the risk of autism, probably by triggering changes in the sympathetic nervous system. There is also a nutritional risk from a poor infant diet (lack of breastfeeding), and there seems to be a genetic risk linked to our ability to excrete toxins.

This is such a long list of possible causes that it's no surprise there is an emotional and confusing debate about autism. In our experience, autism manifests when a combination of these risk factors sets up a child's immune system to overreact to certain environmental triggers.

In this chapter, we show how the recommendations in this book can protect a baby from autism as it's currently understood. We focus on what you can do while you're pregnant—or better yet, while you're planning to get pregnant—to lower the risk of autism.

Heavy Metals

Heavy metals—including aluminum, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and especially mercury—have been linked to autism. The sources of heavy metals in daily life include cigarette smoke, seafood, dental fillings and bridgework, vaccines, and toxic metal vapor in some workplaces.

If you're a smoker, we know you've heard this before, but stopping now before you even conceive might just reduce the risk of autism for your baby. Sticking to the safe seafood listed in chapters 4 and 5 allows you to enjoy seafood while avoiding heavy metals. If you have dental work like amalgam fillings, you might consult with a holistic dentist about having them removed and replaced at least three months before becoming pregnant. If you're pregnant and have metal fillings, do not make the mistake of having your fillings removed. Wait until you're done nursing to do it.

Vaccines are a controversial issue, but the truth is that some vaccines still do contain thimerosal (mercury). Many that don't have thimerosal contain aluminum salts as an adjuvant. It's best to research each vaccine yourself and consult with a holistic physician. Our purpose here is just to tell you that many vaccines do contain heavy metals, and heavy metals—and vaccines in general—are risk factors. If you do choose to vaccinate for flu or travel, following our heavy-metal detox regimen in chapter 13 will help. Evidence does not support the flu vaccine's efficacy compared to supplementing with vitamin D3.

Finally, if you're at risk for exposure to heavy metals in the workplace, you might seek a safer work environment before and during pregnancy. If that's not possible, strictly following all of the safety protocols is sure to help.

Age

Older parents do give birth to autistic children more frequently than younger parents do. Believe it or not, this is especially true of older fathers. We know there's no way to get younger, but there are a number of steps both men and women can take to improve reproductive function and sperm quality. Chapter 13 is loaded with information about detoxing. The exercises in chapter 15 will also help to rejuvenate your body and its ability to reproduce. And the same foods and supplements described in chapters 5 and 7 that help a baby's genes be their best also help older parents to have healthy eggs and sperm. We demonstrated that by following all the tips we've mentioned right here, it's possible for older parents with risk factors to have healthy kids.

Toxins

Keeping toxins away from your baby in the womb is essential, and several of the causes of autism we identified fall into this category. Mycotoxins from trace amounts of mold are particularly potent and harmful. Genetically modified foods have been directly linked to autism, and so have the neurotoxins found in wheat and pasteurized milk products. Avoiding wheat and dairy has even become a mainstream method for reducing autism symptoms in autistic children. We thought it made sense to avoid these foods while our babies were in the womb, too, especially because wheat and dairy are carriers for common mycotoxins.

Some researchers even suspect that EMF exposure from cell phones and electronics might contribute to autism, especially if these devices are in a pregnant mother's sleeping quarters or held against her body while she's pregnant. In fact, one shocking (but small) study was able to use the EMF levels of a mother's bedroom during pregnancy to predict the occurrence of autism later. The X-ray and microwave radiation emitted from fluorescent lighting has also been hypothesized to be a contributing factor. All of these toxins (or unnatural sources of radiation) may alter the womb environment and send a fetus's epigenetic program into a defensive mode, depriving the baby of critical growth opportunities.

GI Tract Imbalance

Nutritional imbalances that contribute to autism include gut dysbiosis. Gut dysbiosis is an intestinal imbalance that results in unfriendly bacteria in the gut causing elevated levels of endotoxins (toxins produced inside the body). In a pregnant mother, these toxins can disrupt an unborn baby's epigenetic program. Incidentally, gut dysbiosis in young children has been linked to late-onset autism. Excess iron has been suspected; this is important to know because iron supplements are very popular among pregnant women. In our section on iron in chapter 7, we describe how to reach the right balance of iron instead of having too little or too much.

Vitamin D3 Deficiency

A deficiency in vitamin D3 might turn out to be one of the biggest causes of autism. Vitamin D3 is a hormone building block that protects a baby's nerves and brain cells from many of the toxins and threats we've discussed. Although we knew it was important to avoid the risk factors for autism we've mentioned, we recognized that it's nearly impossible to avoid them completely. That's where taking plenty of vitamin D3 comes in. Vitamin D3 protects your baby's brain from the small amount of exposure that is inevitable for all of us. Taking vitamin D3 is one of the cheapest and easiest things we recommend in this book, and it happens to be one of the most effective.

Keep Up with the Information

The same aspects of our program that boost fertility and help your baby to stay in growth mode also guard against the suspected causes of autism. We designed our program that way from the very beginning. But we aren't the first ones to say this: changing conditions bring about a constant need to update the information one needs to be healthy. Here we've done our best to provide the latest research on avoiding autism. This protocol worked for us, and we think it can reduce your risk as well. New information on preventing autism will be posted on our website,
www.betterbabybook.com/autism
, the moment we find out about it!

15

Reducing Stress for an Easier and Better Pregnancy

In addition to a special diet and detox protocols, reducing stress is good to do for fertility or pregnancy. For us and for most people, this is the hardest part of preparing for pregnancy and being pregnant. It's tougher, because it's not so black and white. A diet can be as simple as “eat this, don't eat that.” But reducing stress takes psychological and emotional intention, and much of the time we aren't in control of the external circumstances that increase our stress levels. In many cases, getting pregnant and being pregnant are stressful enough on their own, notwithstanding life's other challenges.

In this chapter, we explain why reducing stress is so important for fertility and for having the best pregnancy possible. We'll also describe techniques you can use to reduce stress and give you tips for creating a low-stress environment.

Stress and Fertility

When a woman is stressed, her cortisol level rises. Cortisol is essential for life, but a chronic high level is damaging to health. A high cortisol level is bad for fertility because the body makes cortisol from progesterone. When your cortisol level rises, your progesterone level can fall, because the progesterone is used up. A shortage of progesterone can disrupt hormonal communication, leading to an irregular menstrual cycle and inhibited egg maturation. Furthermore, cortisol competes with progesterone for the same receptors (the cellular proteins that bind the hormone to make the cells work) in your body and your baby's body. If the body's progesterone is used up to make cortisol, a fertilized egg can't be maintained in the womb. Progesterone deficiency can also result in estrogen dominance, which is a common cause of premenstrual syndrome.

During pregnancy, higher cortisol and decreased progesterone discourages the growth signals that shape the intelligence and the sex of your baby. T. S. Wiley, an expert in bioidentical hormone replacement and the author of
Sex, Lies, and Menopause: The Shocking Truth about Synthetic Hormones and the Benefits of Natural Alternatives
, told us recently, “High levels of cortisol in Mom during pregnancy result in lifetime stress for the child.” This is one of the reasons to consider a bioidentical progesterone cream before and during pregnancy.

Progesterone is documented to be a respiratory stimulant and to increase the oxygen level in the blood. In fact, largely as a result of progesterone, a woman's lung capacity increases by about 20 percent by the time her baby is born. We think that using bioidentical progesterone during pregnancy is safe and beneficial, as we discussed in chapter 8.

There are also nerve fibers that directly connect the brain to the ovaries. When a woman is under stress, these nerves can cause spasms in the fallopian tubes and uterus, possibly interfering with a fertilized egg. Consistent with these ideas, studies suggest that women conceive in the months when they are less stressed. For many couples, infertility itself is a source of stress.

Stress and Pregnancy

Stress hormones have both a protective and a damaging effect on the body. Many of them operate by boosting activity temporarily, forcing the body to work faster and harder at whatever it's doing. This provides for a faster response time and a greater ability to fight or flee from a threat. Given our dangerous environment, these hormones promote survival, but only when they act for short periods. The energy that goes into heightening response time always comes at a cost. If stress hormones are chronically elevated, disease accelerates and health begins to deteriorate. Experienced athletes who train for hours every day are among those with the highest risk of getting a disease. When exercised too much, the body extends beyond growth mode and enters a protective stress mode.

Stress harms an unborn baby for two main reasons. First, when the mother is under stress, her body works faster and becomes more vigilant. Naturally, this uses up more energy and resources. In the case of chronic stress, this means her body might be using energy and resources that her baby needs more than she does. But since the mother is stressed, her body doesn't know that and keeps the resources for itself.

Second, the mother's stress hormones send messages not just to her own cells but to her baby's. They prompt a protective fight-or-flight response in your baby even if that response isn't really necessary. A baby who senses stress in the womb starts using energy and resources faster, too, and also starts preparing for a life of stress outside the womb, even if life outside the womb isn't stressful at all.

There's a lot of research backing this up, especially regarding the development of your baby's brain. When the mother is stressed, her higher cortisol and other stress-hormone levels signal her baby that it's not safe to continue in full growth mode. When her baby enters defense mode, the growth of neurons and synapses in the brain is slowed or inhibited. Sometimes the production of fewer nerve receptors causes a physical reprogramming of the brain, making way for the baby to have a lifelong tendency to become stressed easily.

A study of 156 unborn children measured the effect of maternal stress by drawing blood samples from pregnant women and asking them to fill out questionnaires on their emotional states. Once that was completed, the researchers mildly stimulated the unborn child through the mother's abdomen and measured fetal heart rate. The babies of the stressed mothers responded more quickly, sustaining faster heartbeats for longer periods. The babies of the mothers reporting the lowest stress levels had heartbeats that returned to normal most quickly. (Higher fetal heart rate has been linked to heart disease and diabetes later in life.) Mothers who experienced depression during pregnancy tended to have babies who cried more and were difficult to soothe.

High stress in a pregnant woman can even lead to disorders like ADHD and autism in genetically susceptible babies. Much research backs this up. Babies born to mothers under stress while pregnant were found to have a higher rate of motor problems and ADHD. Children who were exposed to excessive maternal stress in the womb showed a greater tendency for anxiety and depression later in life. Mothers of schizophrenics were almost two times as likely to have rated themselves as depressed during the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy. Mothers with emotional difficulties had babies who had higher rates of sleep disorders, digestive problems, and irritability.

All of this makes perfect sense, given our newfound knowledge of epigenetics—it's due to premature defensive (as opposed to growth) brain patterns that the fetus develops in response to high levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Conversely, a low-stress, peaceful, and happy womb environment is accompanied by feel-good endorphins and hormones like oxytocin that promote a sense of well-being in your baby. This allows for optimal brain development and stays with him or her for life.

In extreme cases, chronic high stress can effect the outcome of a pregnancy. Women who reported high levels of anxiety and stress have been found to give birth at an earlier gestational stage and to babies with lower birth weight. The more anxiety and stress a woman described, the lower the weight of her baby was. A group of Michigan researchers found that unmarried women or women in low-income families were more likely to miscarry. Extremely stressed women, such as women who experience domestic abuse during pregnancy, are also more prone to use normal street drugs like tobacco and alcohol to deal with the stress. When these substances are coupled with the mother's stress hormones, the baby often can't survive the environment. Women in these situations are at high risk of premature birth, low–birth weight babies, miscarriage, or stillbirth. These situations usually aren't the mother's fault at all.

Where Does Stress Come From?

A variety of circumstances can lead to stress. It usually takes a combination of them in succession to create chronic high stress. But knowing what's causing your stress can sometimes help you to deal with it and release the emotions. Common sources of stress include the following:

• Unhealthy diet
  
• Toxins in the body
  
• Family, relationship, or marital problems
  
• Financial hardship
  
• Legal conflict
  
• Grief or loss of a loved one
  
• Trouble with communication
  
• Pressure to perform at work or school
  
• Addiction
  
• Health issues
  
• Time management and scheduling
  
• Adaptation to change
  
• Anger issues
  
• Travel or large life adjustment (good or bad)
  
• Difficult daily routine (like heavy traffic)
  
• Unrealistic expectations
  
• Fear and uncertainty about being pregnant
  
• Sleep quality issues
  

Keeping maternal stress low isn't entirely a mother's responsibility. Her husband or partner has an enormous supporting role to play in keeping her peaceful, calm, happy, and stress-free. Before getting pregnant, a couple can reduce stress by cultivating a harmonious, interdependent relationship that supports the woman emotionally and minimizes her stress level. Of course, if the man works to reduce his own stress level, it keeps stress low for his partner, too. We also have a hunch that while a couple is trying to conceive, lower stress in the man leads to better sperm quality.

Aside from outward behavior, internal health issues involving the endocrine system can effect the signals your baby receives. We recommend consulting with a holistic or antiaging physician and taking comprehensive adrenal stress, thyroid, and hormone tests before getting pregnant. Our diet, detox, and stress-reducing methods will help in all categories, but it's important to find out where you stand. Short bursts of stress are natural and aren't very harmful to your baby. It's chronic, ongoing stress that distracts your unborn baby from growing, keeping him or her in a costly protection mode.

What to Do about Stress

Our entire program reduces stress. Eating the right foods gives the body the fuel it needs to handle stress. Toxins and unhealthy foods are themselves a source of stress. That's one reason we eliminate them in our program. Getting enough sleep gives the body time to regenerate, and techniques like exercise, yoga, mindful breathing, meditation, and heart rate variability training reduce the body's stress response. We cover these techniques next and then get into other factors that affect your stress level, like jaw tension, thyroid health, infectious disease, travel, and even the type of lighting in your home or office.

In addition to using these techniques, a simple way to reduce stress is to ask for help when you need it. Support from family, friends, counselors, community agencies, and religious advisers can go a long way in restoring a mother to health and a baby to growth. It's well-known that if a woman shares her emotional baggage, frustrations, and other sources of stress or depression with someone who cares, her burden is lightened. If she finds herself even a little stressed, talking about it with a loved one or getting support will do more than she realizes for her baby. She needs emotional support more during pregnancy than at any other time of life, because this is when her stress-hormone levels can affect her baby's growth profoundly, especially brain development. And, as usual, this advice is not just for women—men would do well to share, too.

No matter what happens, reducing stress can be as simple as doing your best at everything and knowing you did. After all, that's all we can do. When people are content with their situations in life, stress is naturally lower. But stress is increased dramatically when the current situation isn't what we want it to be. Sometimes this is health related and can be corrected by rebalancing brain chemicals, but at other times a change in one's outlook on life is what's needed. Thanks to breakthrough science in psychology and physiology, now more than ever we have access to resources that can help us to improve our attitudes and find contentment and happiness in life.

Sleep

Sleep is your body's time to rest, heal, and regenerate. Getting enough sleep is central to fertility and to a healthy pregnancy and baby. In the 1960s, it was average for Americans to report getting eight to nine hours of sleep every night. Now they report getting only seven. Six to nine hours of sleep a night is sufficient for most adults, although individuals do have various needs and may require more or (in rare cases) less. Pregnant women usually need more, especially during the first trimester.

Proper hormone (endocrine system) function is heavily dependent on a quality sleep cycle. This includes metabolism in particular. The pituitary gland, the master endocrine gland that controls the release of hormones from other glands, is sensitive to sleep loss. The root of this process lies in the pineal gland, a tiny endocrine gland in the center of the brain. The pineal gland is made of nerve and retinal tissues. It is light-sensitive and serves as your biological clock, regulating the circadian rhythm (the twenty-four-hour cycle), including sleep and wakefulness, with hormones like melatonin and cortisol.

The circadian rhythm is the scheduled biochemical, physiological, and behavioral changes that living organisms go through every day. Your body establishes its circadian rhythm in response to the levels of certain types of light, being especially sensitive to the presence and absence of sunlight. Your body resists resetting your circadian rhythm. This means that the sun rising and setting each day actually has an extreme influence on your body's activities.

In order to stimulate the release of sex hormones, the hypothalamus relies on receiving certain messages from the pineal gland through the pituitary gland, making the reproductive cycle heavily dependent on healthy, regular pineal activity. And to have healthy, regular pineal activity, you have to get plenty of regular sleep.

If the sleep pattern is disrupted, pineal activity is disrupted. Sleep-pattern disruption can occur from insomnia, poor lighting conditions in the bedroom, stress, and travel involving a time-zone shift (jet lag). When pineal activity is disrupted, the hypothalamus-pituitary axis is disrupted, and the menstrual cycle and sperm production are impaired. Appetite control and insulin metabolism are also affected, making sleep deprivation a factor in diabetes and obesity. As little as one hour of sleep disruption over the course of several days is enough to decrease cognitive function. If sleep deprivation continues for a longer period, depression can result. A study of women in professions that require frequent partial sleep deprivation found that a staggering 50 percent reported irregular menstrual cycles. Compare that to 20 percent for the general female population.