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Many people wonder whether it's OK to work out while they're sick. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Share on Pinterest A recent study suggests the lifestyle habits of fathers may contribute to the chances of birth defects in newborns.
Birth defects more commonly reported by fathers who drink alcohol. Why might paternal drinking have this impact? More research is needed to understand the link. Almost 5 percent of pregnant women reported binge drinking in the previous month 4 or more drinks per occasion. Heavy alcohol use during the first trimester of pregnancy can disrupt normal development of the face and the brain.
In fact, exposure at any point during gestation may affect brain development. An FAS diagnosis requires:. A specific pattern of three facial abnormalities: narrow eye openings, a smooth area between the lip and the nose vs.
Functional abnormalities may involve a complex pattern of cognitive or behavioral problems that are not consistent with developmental level, and that cannot be explained by factors other than prenatal alcohol exposure e. Facial abnormalities and growth retardation need not be present. This disorder includes medical conditions linked to prenatal alcohol exposure such as: heart, kidney, and bone problems and other malformations; difficulty seeing and hearing; and reduced immune function.
It requires evidence of both prenatal alcohol exposure and CNS involvement, as indicated by impairments in the following three areas: cognition, self-regulation, and adaptive functioning. This new diagnosis for use by mental health professionals will improve understanding of the multifaceted behavioral deficits seen in some people exposed to alcohol prenatally, and facilitate improved diagnosis and treatment of these individuals.
Timing—in what stage of pregnancy a woman drinks and if she drinks heavily just as the fetus develops a particular feature or brain region. Other factors can also play a role in how prenatal alcohol exposure affects children. Research demonstrates that children may be more affected by prenatal alcohol exposure if their mothers:. Research demonstrates that children can be more affected by prenatal alcohol exposure if their mothers experience adverse-living conditions and high levels of stress.
These may include: social isolation, living in circumstances where alcohol misuse is common and accepted, and living in a community where resources for prenatal care are limited. Researchers and clinicians have developed effective learning and behavioral interventions to help people with FASD.
For example, school-based interventions can help children with FASD learn more easily. School-based interventions may include specialized teaching strategies that provide a consistent routine and allow children to practice new skills over and over again. Family support groups and classes to help parents better care for a child with FASD.
Nutritional supplements for pregnant women and postnatal supplements for their children. Behavioral interventions for affected children, including training in social skills, problem solving, and personal safety.
Drinking patterns and alcohol-related birth defects. Some of those studies have demonstrated a clear relationship between the alcohol dose and the severity of gross brain growth restriction. In one study that used artificial rearing methods 3 3 The term artificial rearing methods means that newborn rats are raised away from their mothers, in climate-and humidity-controlled environments, and fed a nutritionally adequate diet similar to that found in rat mothers milk.
Alcohol can be added to that diet to generate groups of rat pups exposed to various alcohol doses and exposure patterns Bonthius and West , groups of newborn rats were exposed daily during the early postnatal period to a wide range of alcohol doses i. The investigators found a near-linear inverse relationship between alcohol dose and total brain weight that is, higher alcohol doses resulted in lower brain weight.
Thus, for a given exposure pattern, higher alcohol doses resulted in both higher BACs and more severe injury to the developing brain. Other findings from the same research group support the hypothesis that binge-like alcohol exposure is more harmful than non-binge exposure. In that study, Pierce and West compared the effects of equal total amounts of alcohol administered in different exposure patterns on brain growth in rats.
Using artificial rearing methods, the researchers exposed groups of neonatal rats to a total alcohol dose of 6. The second group received condensed exposure i. At the end of the treatment period, the brain weights of the rats in the condensed exposure group were significantly lower than those of the continuously exposed group, demonstrating that brain growth is impaired more by bingelike patterns of exposure to alcohol than by continuous exposure.
A subsequent study tested the hypothesis that a lower daily dose of alcohol can result in greater brain growth restriction and cell loss in various brain regions than will a higher daily dose if the lower dose is administered in a binge-like pattern Bonthius and West The researchers compared the following three groups of alcohol-exposed neonatal rats:. When the brains of all animals were weighed at the end of the study, the brain weights of the animals in the group receiving 4.
The animals receiving 6. These results clearly demonstrate that a lower daily dose consumed in a bingelike pattern can be more harmful than a higher daily dose consumed in a continuous pattern. The reason underlying these results is that the condensation of the alcohol administration into progressively shorter periods generated correspondingly higher peak BACs.
This relationship between pattern of alcohol exposure and, consequently, peak BACs and brain growth restrictions also has been observed in studies using nonhuman primates as experimental subjects. In an extensive and elegant series of experiments, researchers exposed nonhuman primates to alcohol in a bingelike pattern during different times of fetal brain development.
The investigators administered alcohol to pregnant monkeys during gestation using 3 different administration periods: 1 the first 3 weeks, 2 the first 6 weeks, or 3 all 24 weeks of the gestation period Astley et al. The study found that on several indices of gross brain development and cognitive functioning, no difference in the severity of the deficits existed among the infants of monkeys from the three timing groups.
Thus, a similar amount of gross brain damage and impairment in cognitive function occurred if the fetuses were exposed to alcohol only during the early part of gestation, rather than throughout gestation. Similar studies conducted on non-human primates demonstrated a variety of possible outcomes from alcohol exposure during early gestation. These outcomes included the loss of certain neurons i. Viewed together, these findings clearly demonstrate the vulnerability of the fetal brain to alcohol-induced damage from exposure during early gestation.
Clinicians should emphasize these results, as well as those of the rat studies, when informing women of childbearing age about the harmful effects of binge-like alcohol exposure on fetal brain development during the first 4 to 6 weeks of pregnancy. These animal studies undeniably demonstrate that drinking cessation only after a pregnancy is realized may not spare the fetal brain and other organs from harm, including eventual behavior impairments.
Limited information exists on binge drinking and fetal outcome among humans in the clinical literature. One reason for this gap is the way that the information gathered from the human population is measured and categorized e.
For example, measurements often focus on the average or total amount of alcohol consumed, rather than on drinking patterns or the maximum alcohol dose consumed on a single occasion. For example, as mentioned earlier, binge drinkers may consume lower total alcohol amounts than do continuous drinkers, because in actuality, binge drinkers consume fewer drinks.
Thus, if consumption is averaged over time e. Furthermore, some alcohol-intake questionnaires inquire about the typical alcohol intake per occasion, rather than the maximum alcohol intake on a single occasion. Averaging the typical amount of alcohol consumed per occasion during a period of 1 month or 1 year may seriously underestimate the maximum amount of alcohol consumed in a single episode of binge drinking.
Averaging may lead to particularly ambiguous results, because some animal studies have reported neuronal loss in the developing brain even after only a single episode of binge exposure Goodlett and Eilers ; Pauli et al.
Nevertheless, several studies have assessed the effects of maternal drinking patterns on the outcome of human off-spring. Some of those studies have failed to find a relationship between binge alcohol consumption and adverse off-spring outcome; however, such studies are typically plagued with methodological problems e.
One detailed series of studies examining the effects of binge exposure on off-spring development has been conducted by researchers in the Seattle Longitudinal Prospective Study on Alcohol and Pregnancy under the direction of Dr. Ann Streissguth. This approach enabled the researchers to calculate scores that reflected both the level and pattern of alcohol consumption.
Then, the children of those women were followed for at least 14 years and were assessed at specific ages on several different tasks that reflected learning, memory, and various forms of cognitive processing.
When the children were studied at age 7. Moreover, the children exposed to binge drinking before their mothers realized that they were pregnant were more likely to be rated by their parents as having learning problems, being below average academically, and being hyperactive and impulsive.
The children also were more likely to be rated by teachers as expressing behaviors that were incompatible with learning Streissguth et al. It is particularly important to note that the commonly used measure of alcohol consumption average ounces of alcohol consumed per day and frequency of drinking did not predict these neurobehavioral outcomes.
When the children were studied again at age 11, children of binge-drinking mothers were still classified as having problems with distractibility, restlessness, and lack of persistence Olson et al. Finally, when the children reached age 14, the variable number of drinks per occasion still significantly predicted some critical neurobehavioral measures i. Thus, one common theme emerged from this comprehensive data analysis the greater the average number of drinks that the pregnant women consumed per occasion, the worse her children later performed on measures important for reading and arithmetic skills Streissguth al.
The harmful effects of bingelike drinking patterns were confirmed with more recent data from a sample of mothers and their infants studied in Detroit, Michigan Jacobson et al. The investigators found that infants born to mothers who consumed at least five drinks per occasion and, on average, at least once per week, had clearly definable functional deficits as measured by birth weight, the Bayley Mental and Psychomotor Developmental scales, the Elicited Play test, and tests of processing speed.
The researchers calculated that the threshold for these effects was an average consumption of 0. The functional deficits were not observed, however, in the offspring of women who reported drinking frequently but not in a bingelike pattern.
Several factors may help explain why binge drinking is particularly harmful to fetal brain development. First, the peak BACs achieved with this drinking pattern are higher than the peak BACs achieved with more continuous drinking patterns.
In turn, a high BAC is a critical factor in producing fetal brain injury. Researchers do not yet know the minimum amount of alcohol that is harmful to the developing brain. It is possible that the fetus can tolerate a certain level of alcohol exposure with no ill effects, and that only by binge drinking, a woman would risk exceeding such a threshold for alcohol-induced fetal brain injury. Another consequence of higher peak BACs is prolonged alcohol exposure.
The rate of alcohol breakdown i. As a result, the higher the BAC is, the longer it takes the body to metabolize all the alcohol. Accordingly, binge-drinking episodes produce longer periods of alcohol exposure for the developing fetal brain than do consumption and metabolism of a single drink. Second, the timing of binge-drinking episodes relative to key stages of brain development may influence the extent of its adverse effects.
Binge drinking may be particularly harmful if it occurs at a point in development that is critical for some specific developmental brain event. Because some of these developmental events are of short duration, a single binge-drinking episode might overlap with one of these events. Unfortunately, the prevalence of bingelike alcohol consumption is particularly high among women and men of reproductive age; moreover, researchers have found a strong association between binge drinking and unplanned or unprotected sexual activity Wechsler et al.
Consequently, binge drinking may increase episodes of unprotected sexual intercourse and, thus, increase the risk of alcohol exposure near conception. Third, alcohol consumption in a bingelike pattern exposes the developing fetal brain to not only high peak BACs, but also to periods of withdrawal from alcohol. The effects of multiple withdrawal episodes may be a potentially important risk factor for developmental brain injury.
To date, no comprehensive studies have examined in detail the effects of oral, bingelike alcohol exposure and the resulting withdrawal during key stages of fetal brain development. This hypothesis is an underrepresented and important area of research that requires further attention. The evidence presented in this article allows for two critical conclusions.
First, the data from the comprehensive series of studies performed on humans, as well as on nonhuman primate and rodent experimental models, clearly show that binge drinking is more harmful to fetal brain development than is non-binge drinking.
Second, early alcohol expo-sure i.
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