Stress in the Womb and How it Lasts Forever

There is current research so important that all I can do is bow down and genuflect before it. It is research that supports my theories developed over forty years ago; but there is more. There are two studies , one from Germany (Hans Berger, Clinic for Neurology at the University Hospital), and the other is from the Netherlands, (Tiburg University).

In the Berger study; it was done on sheep because their pregnancy development is very close to humans. The parent animals were injected with a stress hormone, an analogue of cortisol. In premature fetuses it offers a better chance at life, helping the development of the lungs. This also increased the development of the brain, as well. One offshoot of this research was the finding that this alone, stress, alters sleep patterns perhaps for a lifetime. So if we want to know why we cannot sleep we need to look to the gestation period, but let us not look to shots of cortisol given to the mother; let’s look to the stress the carrying mother undergoes that operates just as if she were given a shot of cortisol. So if we have trouble sleeping now because the mother was stressed while pregnant. And by the way, if she drank many cokes, or coffee, or if she injected or snorted cocaine we have the same result; her system acts if stressed.

The researchers called this fragmentation of sleep patterns which also occurs in depression; and no surprise, there are serious sleep disturbances in depression. In other words, during gestation the mother may stamp in tendencies to depression in the offspring. This can last a lifetime.

In an unpublished but reported study it was found that in research on 40 eight year old children who were given cortisol-like medication during womb-life, they did much worse on key indices of behavior than normals. Their IQ was lower and so was their concentration and attention span. Again, when we look at ADD in children we must look at this research. Attention Deficit is above all, a distraction in brain processes that may come from major input very early in life. That input from a hyper, revved up mother, is far too much for the baby who is over-activated. The hyper-activation is impressed in the brain of the offspring, and so keeps the baby’s brain over-stimulated. He can no longer easily focus on one thing when so much is going on in his brain. Those early experiences form an indelible imprint for life. That imprint is never inert. It activates and re-activates and keeps us unable to relax, which was the case with the children. Investigators say they were programmed in the womb to release more stress hormones throughout their lives.

In the Tilburg Study they found that maternal stress between the 12th and 22nd week affected the later emotional and cognitive functions for twenty years later. So to reiterate, as if it needed reiterating, womb-life is critical for all later life, not the least of which is the advent of depression. They go on to say, “increased levels of stress hormones in the baby in the womb …play a larger role in the (later) development of disease than previously thought.”

It is not only about obvious physical afflictions but also about serious emotional problems, depression and anxiety. This again adds support to what I have written about. These scientists found the residue of stress hormones in the brains of the unborn. These means: 1. They could be under stress during womb-life, and 2. That the stress endures for a very long time. 3. This stress foretells of impaired functioning later on and possibly the beginnings of mental illness. 4. The damage can be permanent so that high blood pressure, heart disease, and in my opinion, Alzheimer’s disease can result.

It took a while for this research to appear, but how nice to see it.