Herbal Health Spot

A well balanced diet is more important when you are pregnant, since what you eat has to meet your unborn baby’s needs as well as your own requirements. The first three months of pregnancy is important as most of the physical and mental growth of the baby takes place during this time.

The principal organs both external and internal and the nervous system of the baby form within this period. A pregnant women should know that she is not only responsible for herself, but also for the unborn child inside her. The child’s physical and mental development after birth will have a influence of anything seen, thoughts and the food eaten by the pregnant woman.

During the first three months of pregnancy (and preferably before becoming pregnant) a woman needs folic acid. This is one of the B-group vitamins and is also known as vitamin B9. It is important during pregnancy for the creation of the baby’s nervous system.
Good natural sources of folic acid are barley beans, fruit, green vegetables, orange juice, lentils, peas and rice.

During pregnancy, a woman’s body needs more iron than usual to produce all the blood needed to supply nutrition to the placenta. Good sources of iron are green vegetables such as broccoli and spinach, strawberries, muesli and wholemeal bread.

The researchers insist two omega-3 fatty acids – docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) have been found to avoid sensory overload, maybe by maintaining nerve-cell membranes. The finding connects low omega-3s to the information-processing problems found in people with schizophrenia; bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders; Huntington’s disease; and other afflictions of the nervous system.

“It is an uphill battle now to reverse the message that ‘fats are bad,’ and to increase omega-3 fats in our diet,” said Norman Salem Jr., PhD, who led this study at the Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The body cannot make these essential nutrients from scratch. It gets them by metabolizing their precursor, a-linolenic acid (LNA), or from foods or dietary supplements with DHA and EPA in a readily usable form.

“Humans can convert less than one percent of the precursor into DHA, making DHA an essential nutrient in the human diet,” said Irina Fedorova, PhD, one of the paper’s co-authors. EPA is already known for its anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular effects, but DHA makes up more than 90 percent of the omega-3s in the brain (which has no EPA), retina and nervous system in general.

During the study, the researchers fed four different diets with no or varying types and amounts of omega-3s to four groups of pregnant mice and then their offspring. They measured how the offspring, once grown, responded to a classic test of nervous-system function in which healthy animals are exposed to a sudden loud noise. Normally, animals flinch. However, when they hear a softer tone in advance, they flinch much less.

It appears that normal nervous systems use that gentle warning to prepare instinctively for future stimuli, an adaptive process called sensorimotor gating. The mice raised on DHA and EPA showed normal, adaptive sensorimotor gating by responding in a significantly calmer way to the loud noises that followed soft tones. The research is published in journal Behavioural Neuroscience.

A study conducted in Poland suggests that shovelling down potato chips may increase the risk of heart disease.

Lead researcher Marek Naruszewicz points out that acrylamide from foods may increase the risk of heart disease.

Describing the study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Naruszewicz revealed that acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer.

The researcher said that after ingesting large amounts of potato chips providing about 157 micrograms of acrylamide daily for four weeks, the participants had adverse changes in oxidized LDL, inflammatory markers and antioxidants that help the body eliminate acrylamide-all of which may increase the risk of heart disease.

Naruszewicz conceded that additional research was needed in long-term studies of people consuming typical amounts of acrylamide.

Meanwhile, in the study paper, the researcher has suggested that FDA and the food industry continue to decrease acrylamide in foods by improving food processing technologies.

FDA reports that acrylamide is particularly high in potato chips and French fries.

Dr. Mary Ann Johnson, a spokesperson for the American Society for Nutrition, said: “Consumers can reduce their exposure to acrylamide by limiting their intake of potato chips and French fries, choosing a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low fat meat and dairy products, and quitting smoking, which is a major source of acrylamide.”

Her saucy curves and sexy pout suffice to turn men nutty. But Sameera Reddy is far from your average starving star who keeps an unhealthy distance from food, for fear that it might pile on the pounds.

Rather, the girl who has transformed from tubby teenager to a svelte frame, has stumbled upon a smart tip to keep herself fit, even while she has a blast at parties!

“I carry my own tiffin,” reveals Reddy in a tabloid quote. “And I eat it on the way while I’m being driven to the party or event.” Once she shows up, Reddy steers clear of the food far and doesn’t so much as sniff at the bubbly.

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