A woman who became pregnant during the Stone Age faced enormous risks compared to the current mother. There was no way to control bleeding or infection; Caesarean section was not an option. The fact that we survived as a species, it seems wonderful - as long as you do not dig a little deeper.
The outcome of pregnancy depends on the main state of the mother, nutrition before and during pregnancy and the threat of infection. In all these areas, a woman 50,000 years ago was better than her colleague today. How is this possible in an era when there is no plumbing, no medical care and no protection against infectious diseases?
Best Diet, Best Pregnancy
The diet of a primitive woman was less prone to a deficiency of important nutrients than today's young girls. (Reference 1) A study conducted at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center confirmed earlier reports that pregnant adolescent women and adults take too little iron, zinc, folate, and vitamin E.
A woman who starts a pregnancy without enough calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients to strengthen bones increases the risk of developing osteoporosis in middle age. But this is not the end of the story. Her child may also be at greater risk of fracture in the future. Middle-aged osteoporosis is at least partially programmed before birth, especially if the mother smokes and has little physical activity. (2, 3, 4)
Most non-professionals believe that stone agents were heartfelt butchers. Anthropologists know that it is not. They lived on the prevailing meat diet for only about 100,000 years, from the time when Homo sapiens developed keen hunting skills before the advent of agriculture. Until that time, meat came from carrion and small game. Most of their calories come from vegetables, fruits, roots and nuts.
Herbal products contain everything a pregnant woman needs, including vitamins, antioxidants, proteins and minerals. Modern vegetarians often lack vitamin B12, but small game, birds. eggs and the dilemma or accidental inclusion of insects in the Stone Age diet provided more than enough of that critical nutrient.
A deficiency of folic acid in early pregnancy leads to defective formation of the brain and spinal cord of a newborn. These anomalies are much less likely among mothers' babies who receive a sufficient amount of folate, at least 400 micrograms per day. So few women eat enough green leafy vegetables to increase their folate levels, the US government requires bakery manufacturers to add them to their products.
Midwives have been prescribed multivitamins for their pregnant patients for decades, but only in recent years have studies confirmed the wisdom of this practice. In 2002, the American Medical Association changed the situation for a long time and recommended that everyone, without exception, need a multivitamin / multimineral preparation every day to avoid the methyl but unhealthy inadequacies of these nutrients. Taking multivitamins reduces the risk of birth defects in the newborn, especially those associated with the heart. Preeclampsia is a serious, sometimes fatal complication of pregnancy. Women who take vitamins C and E have a low risk of this condition three times. (5, 6)
Would these mostly vegetarian early stone agents become unsatisfactory? Most likely not. Their diet was rich in iron, as well as vitamin C, which facilitates the absorption of iron. Under these conditions, iron deficiency would be rare. Grains interfere with the absorption of iron, which explains why iron deficiency is common in societies that exist mainly on grains. However, one of the main reasons why women of the Stone Age were illegally iron deficient was that they didn’t have nearly as many menstrual cycles as modern women.
In a primitive society, the decline of menstruation is about 5 years later than that of American young women. Modern hunter-gatherers, like the oldest stone agents, are either pregnant or breastfeeding for most of their years of childbearing, and they only menstruate several times between weaning one child and conceiving another. In these groups, breastfeeding suppresses ovulation because it is literally on demand, that is, every few minutes, even at night. For a modern mother, breastfeeding on demand is often implied no more than every couple of hours, and sometimes once or twice a night for the third or fourth month. Thus, menstruation returns, despite care, and the monthly blood loss continues.
The connection between the brain and the brain
From about 150,000 years ago, our ancestors discovered seafood. The increase in fatty acid consumption in fish and shellfish led to a significant increase in brain size and complexity, which allowed people to grow faster in the next 100,000 years than in the previous million. Enormous success in the manufacture of tools and the development of language and group communication followed.
The human brain consists mainly of water, but the solid part is mostly oily. The body cannot produce omega-3 and omega-6 fats, which make up so much of the structure of the brain and eyes, so we need them in our diet. Maternal insufficiency of these nutrients, especially omega-3, prevents the penetration of the brain and eyes of the newborn. The best source of omega-3 fats is fish; nuts and leafy green vegetables are also good sources.
Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are found in every cell of the body. They provide an efficient flow of nutrients, regulate nerve impulses and keep inflammation in the right balance. In the right diet there is an equal amount of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. This allows the immune system to fight infection, a real threat that people faced with the stone age before the age of antibiotics, only 70 years ago.
The advantage for a child of a diet rich in omega-3 fats is obvious, but mothers also need it. Nature protects the unborn baby by tapping in the stores mom omega-3 fats. A woman taking omega-3 fatty acids, small in the months and years preceding pregnancy, will have a disadvantage. It gets worse with a successful pregnancy if its omega-3 stays low. Postpartum depression affects about 10% of women after childbirth and is associated with an omega-3 fat deficiency. (7, 8)
The newest epidemic
There is one complication of pregnancy that never occurred in the stone age: type 2 diabetes. No disease has risen so quickly in our time. Since the 1950s, it has increased several times; from 1990 to 2001, it grew by 61 percent. Gestational diabetics (Ref. 9) are those who do not yet have a full-blown illness, but cannot properly treat blood sugar levels (glucose) during pregnancy. About half of them will develop overt diabetes in subsequent years after giving birth.
Most of us know type 2 diabetes, which was once called adult diabetes, as a disease that developed in our children in later years. It is not uncommon to find it in adolescents, even in high school students. As he plunged into the younger generation, he warned — but not surprised — the doctors discovered that it was no longer a rarity in obstetric practice.
How can we be so sure that pregnant stone agar didn't have diabetes? It is a lifestyle disease that has three major associations: low levels of physical activity, a diet high in refined grains and sugar, and obesity. These conditions simply did not occur in the Stone Age. Their lifestyle demanded strenuous efforts. Grains of any kind were not part of their diet, because they needed tools and controlled heat. Sugar, as we know it, simply did not exist, and honey was an accidental successful finding. Obesity would be nonexistent, since today a population of hunter-gatherers is dying among the planets.
Diabetic mothers have more pregnancy complications than normal women. Their children die 5 times more often and are born 3 times more often with anomalies of various organs.
They kept germs at bay.
General wisdom says that people of the Stone Age were infected with an infection, but this is simply not true. They had a strong immune system due to a high level of physical activity and an unusually diverse diet. Between the protective antibodies that the mother passed through the placenta and those that she passed on to the newborn through breast milk, the stone-age babies had more protection against the microbes of the time than modern babies do.
Sexually transmitted diseases do not spread very far or very quickly when people live in small isolated lanes, as they did during the Stone Age. The likelihood that a pregnant woman today will have at least one of these infections is more than 50% (reference 10). Impact on children can be serious; some die, some will be damaged by the brain.
Choice and consequences
Tobacco, alcohol and drugs cause a generation of babies with problems that the Stone Age children have never encountered. Mothers who smoke have infections that are smaller than normal and whose brain development can be compromised. The use of alcohol or cocaine by the mother during pregnancy leads to stunted growth, birth defects and other serious problems.
Given the choice, none of us will want to live in the world of the Stone Age, but we will neutralize the almost miraculous medical achievements of the last century. We allowed our daughters to be less physically active and exist on a marginal diet. If we could reverse these two factors alone, there would be a sharp decline in prematurity and other complications of pregnancy.
The lessons we can learn from the Stone Age are not subtle, unclear, and not capable of imitating them. We can produce the healthiest generation, making the best choice for our children and for ourselves.
Philip J. Goskienski, MD, author of The Secrets of the Health of the Stone Age, The Best Life of Publishers. Contact him through his website at http://www.stoneagedoc.com.
Recommendations
1. Giddens JB et al., Pregnant adolescents and adult women have very low levels of intake of selected nutrients, J Am Diet Assoc 2000; 100: 1334-1340
2 Cooper C et al., Overview: the origins of an osteoporotic fracture, Osteoporosis Int 2006; 17 (3): 337-47
3 Prentice A et al., Bone Growth and Development, Proc Nutr Soc 2006 Nov; 65 (4): 348-60
4 Lanham SA et al., Intrauterine bone programming. Part I: Changing the Osteogenic Environment, Osteoporos Int 2008 Feb; 19 (2): 147-56
5 Keen CL et al., The likelihood of micronutrient deficiencies, which are a significant factor contributing to the occurrence of pregnancy complications, Am Soc Nutr Sciences J Nutr 2003 May; 133: 1597S-1605S
6 Bodnar LM et al., Use of peritoneal multivitamins reduces the risk of pre-eclampsia, Am J Epidemiol 2006 Sep 1; 164 (5): 470-7
7 Freeman MP, Omega-3 fatty acids and perinatal depression: a literature review and recommendations for future research, Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids 2006 Oct-Nov; 75 (4-5): 291-7
8 Kendall-Tackett K, A New Paradigm for Depression in New Mothers: The Central Role of Inflammation and How Breastfeeding and Anti-Inflammatory Treatment Protects Maternal Mental Health, Int Breastfeed J 2007; 2: 6
9 Greene MF and Solomon CG, Gestational diabetes mellitus - treatment time, N Engl J Med 2005 June 16; 352 (24): 2544-46
10 Baseman JG and Koutsky LA, Epidemiology of Human Papillomavirus Infections, J Clin Virol 2005 Mar; 32 Supple 1: S16-24
