LOOKING AFTER HEALTH DURING PREGNANCY: STAYING OFF CIGARETTES
Smoking
There is so much information out there about the risks you run of getting lung cancer, emphysema and other diseases if you smoke. Thankfully, many people are now aware of the detrimental effects of smoking when a woman is pregnant.
Tobacco smoke contains more than 4,000 compounds and these pass directly into the foetal blood supply. These chemicals have different effects on the developing baby:
• Nicotine causes the foetal heart rate to accelerate. It also decreases blood flow to the placenta and can affect placental amino acid uptake, causing retarded growth of the baby.
• Carbon monoxide affects foetal blood flow to the brain, heart and adrenal glands and can affect brain DNA and protein synthesis.
• Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are mutagens and carcinogens and can interfere with placental hormone activity.
• Cyanide can cause retarded infant growth.
No less than 45 studies have confirmed that smoking is a major cause of low birth weight.
Cadmium is an inorganic poison present in smoke which becomes concentrated in the placenta. It is classed, like alcohol, as a teratogen, and interferes with the utilization of many important minerals including zinc. Cadmium is also a poison to the baby. In conjunction with low zinc status, it has been associated with human stillbirth, underweight babies and various forms of congenital abnormalities.
The rate of premature births for mothers who smoke 30 cigarettes a day is 33 per cent, compared to only 6 per cent for non-smoking mothers. Studies have found that smokers (both male and female) are more likely to have children with all types of congenital malformations (in particular cleft palate, hare lip, squints and deafness). Even if you don’t smoke, but your partner smokes over 10 cigarettes a day, you are 2.5 times more likely to have a child with congenital malformations.
These substances should also be avoided during pregnancy and breastfeeding. If your partner insists on smoking he should not smoke in the house or when you are with him. Only 15 per cent of the smoke from a cigarette is inhaled; the rest goes into the air and will be inhaled by those near the smoker.
Children of parents who smoke inhale amounts of nicotine equivalent to them actively smoking 60-150 cigarettes a year. This results in an increased risk of asthma, chest infections, and ear, nose and throat infections for children. It is estimated that 50 children a day are admitted to hospital due to the effects of passive smoking.
Cot Death
Smoking mothers also put their babies at higher risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (or cot death). Professor Jean Golding, of the Royal Hospital for Children in Bristol, found that, in comparison to a mother who doesn’t smoke at all, mothers who smoke between one and two cigarettes a day are 80 per cent more likely to have a baby who suffers a cot death and those smoking more than 10 a day are nearly three times as likely to have such a death.
Professor Golding also studied boys born to smoking mothers. These boys were significantly more likely to have undescended testes. So, the effects of these toxins are literally being passed on from generation to generation and will have a long-term effect not only on the sexual development of a woman’s own children but also on her grandchildren.
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