Chapter 11 Chapter Nine Bullying the Little Guy

In 1993, when I was at a small expert seminar in London, I first heard David.I was pleasantly surprised and delighted by David Barker's report.He dismisses the theory of fat as the cause of myocardial infarction, and I think he has a good point.But what really attracted me was his groundbreaking argument.His reasoning at the time was as follows: It is important that babies are large and strong at birth and develop well in the first few years so that they have a good basis for resistance to myocardial infarction.I was delighted to hear this, for I myself weighed ten pounds at birth! The person who reported must have seen my happy face, so he came over to chat with me during the meeting break.He said: Actually, this is nothing new at all.You can ask the pig farmer, if he wants to get healthy and strong piglets, what will he do?He will take good care of the sow, feed it the best feed, and take care of it like a pregnant woman.To be honest, I think veterinary nutritionists know a lot more about nutritional psychology than us human nutritionists do!

But why does the size of the baby and the care of the sow affect the occurrence of myocardial infarction?Did I hear you wrong?Isn't this kind of idea a bit whimsical? It all started like this.The epidemiologist, who works at the MRC Institute of Environmental Epidemiology at Southampton Hospital in England, was looking at official statistics and noticed that in the UK, areas where infant mortality was high at the beginning of this century, people died The proportion of myocardial infarction is also high.It was an apparent contradiction, high infant mortality was a sign of poverty, while myocardial infarction was the disease of the rich at the time.As he delved further into the issue, he got a hint from the livestock industry.In livestock breeding, they have long known that birth weight is closely related to later health.

So Barker and his research team began to think that they should investigate the relationship between human body constitution at birth and various organ aging diseases that appear in the future.How to investigate?Enter the delivery room, measure the height and weight of newborns, and wait until fifty or sixty years later to investigate their illness or death?But it's almost impossible. He came up with a brilliant idea.Because there are always some old records that will survive, they mobilized an Oxford University historian, and after years of searching in dusty attics and musty storerooms, they did find what they were looking for.

A prescient midwife in Hertfordshire meticulously documented the births of tens of thousands of babies in Hertfordshire and Sheffield from 1911 to 1945 Names, weights, heights, abdominal circumferences, and head circumferences are all registered in a thick book. Now it is only necessary to find people who have had these records and investigate their health conditions and causes of death. The results of the investigation are obviously surprising: Although they were born at full term, but their development is not good in the mother's body, and the baby is very small, there are many people who develop insulin resistance and low glucose tolerance in the future, and they suffer from high blood pressure, blood coagulation degree, etc. The proportion of hyperlipidemia and hyperlipidemia, and the proportion of death from myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular infarction are relatively high.The same goes for babies who are too small in terms of placenta or head size.Also, babies who gain below-average weight in the early postnatal period, even though they were born with a normal weight, suffer the same fate.Conversely, those who were the heaviest at birth and had the fastest growth in the first year had the best performance in later life and the lowest death rate from myocardial infarction.These surprising correlations were statistically significant and independent of the subjects' social status, smoking status, or other lifestyle differences.

When a person is not born, the life of the mother has a direct impact on the development of the fetus in the womb.Long-term imbalance of placental and fetal hormone secretion will lead to abnormal development and dysfunction of fetal organs.From animal experiments, we know that because the breakdown of corticosteroids in the blood requires a special enzyme, if the mother does not get enough protein from the diet, this enzyme will be lacking in the placenta.This steroid hormone will enter the circulatory system of the fetus, and then affect the hormone regulation in the early stage of the baby, leaving congenital adverse symptoms.What about insulin secretion?The role of insulin in the fetus is to control the growth rate of nutrient absorption.The lack of protein in the mother's body can cause glucose and insulin metabolism disorders, which is why many people who are thin, underweight, and underdeveloped will suffer from insulin-dependent diabetes when they grow up.

Another well-known example of the impact of early infant development on health is rickety disease, which is caused by the lack of a nutrient during the early development of newborns.Once the bone is deformed, it cannot be restored and will accompany the patient for a lifetime. In recent years, people have studied the role of iron and zinc in particular.If the mother's intake of these two trace elements is insufficient, it will affect the development of the fetus and lead to slow growth.Insufficient intake of these two elements in infants and young children will also delay development.What are the best sources of iron and zinc?It's meat, red muscle, and this kind of unhealthy meat, many mothers have long since stopped eating

According to Barker's theory, general nutritional deficiency and severe malnutrition will make the development of the fetus enter a state of emergency.At this time, the most important thing is the development of the brain.Therefore, the necessary nutrients must be supplied to the brain first, and the rest will be distributed to other parts of the body.If the already deficient nutrients are evenly distributed, the fetus will not survive.Nutrients are distributed in this way, and it is the internal organs that suffer, such as the liver and pancreas.Underdeveloped organs have poor cell function, which will affect future metabolic functions.

The lack of nutrients during pregnancy will not only lead to underweight newborns, but even from the perspective of placental proportions, underweight or too small, and stunted or dysfunctional organs grow up, especially in obese and nervous Under load, it will not work properly.The result is metabolic dysregulation leading to the development of insulin resistance, high blood pressure or cholesterol and diabetes. This may explain why the incidence of myocardial infarction in India is so high.Since many people here live in poverty and lack of food, moreover, the living conditions of Indian women are poor.Here, I propose a new solution: take good care of future mothers, especially let them eat well.And those modern women with strong self-awareness among us want to take care of family and career, work until before giving birth, and return to work as soon as possible after giving birth. Usually, if they don’t have time, they buy semi-finished products and go home to heat up to solve the problem. meal.What about the future of their children?

davidBuck was ridiculed at first, and later even attacked.However, as the saying goes, the best is yet to come.In recent years, studies in the United States, Northern Europe and India have confirmed Buck's findings.There is no longer any doubt about this, and even his critics for many years no longer deny that the influence of the mother's body on the concept of the fetus and the influence of the newborn's environment in the first few months are of great importance to the health of adults.Now, one more question: how much does this affect our genes? Barker's breakthrough discovery has received widespread attention.The theory he expounded is called Barker's theory or thrifty phenotype theory. If translated into popular terms, it can be called a fully functional storage model, pointing out the biological significance of this phenomenon: everything is based on survival , in times of famine, it is better to be sick or live a shorter life than to let the whole human race go extinct.