Medicine Maximizing Your Child's Health and IQ Via Various Pregnancy Interventions

[arrall]

Here is a very interesting analysis of various things to do during pregnancy to potentially maximize your child's IQ and health while minimizing their risk of mental and physical illness.
The analysis includes potential impact on IQ, likelihood that each intervention is accurate, percentage of people that each intervention likely applies to, etc.
It ranges from basic stuff like minimizing stress and avoiding CMV + toxoplasma to lesser known advice (with a ton of evidence) like choline supplementation, avoiding ibuprofen/excessive acetaminophen/painkillers, and minimizing licorice consumption to more out there ideas with poor evidence like high-fruit diets, birth month selection, avoiding handling plastic receipts for long periods of time, etc. Also some interesting stuff on how paternal age affects the health of a child, since usually the focus is on the age of the mother.

The embryo selection seems to be the most interesting by far with a supposed 33% reduction in Type 1 Diabetes and 42.3% reduction in Type 2, but there isn't data on real-world results as of yet.

I see a lot of potential for such interventions, and personally I will probably convince my hypothetical wife to try a couple of these if/when I have children in the distant future. Hopefully embryo selection is widely available by then.

I'm excited to hear what everyone thinks about this.

 

[JoshLobbs]

Minerals are super important when it comes to pregnancy, get your (hypothetical) wife a Himalayan salt lamp not for the hippy energy stuff but so she can lick it and get minerals from it, honestly I know this sounds a bit wrong but Himalayan salt is packed full of what gestating mothers need.

Protine is also important because she is building a whole new being inside of her. Calcium and magnesium too (for like bones and milk and mitochondria).

Oh and yea toxo is awful, if a woman catches it during pregnancy they will abort. This is why its really important for women, who even suspect they may be pregnant, to not go anywhere near cat's shit or after birth from ewes (female sheep).

Test for pollutants in your home. Specifically lead which you can get a marker pen thing to test paints and stuff for.

And ofc they should stay away from all narcotics and some medications.

Oh and to increase fertility its generally* a good idea for women to gain some weight before trying for a child. Along with pre-conception mineral suplements this will help with the likelihood of eggs attaching to the uterine lining.

*being overweight is bad for fertility.

 

[Skorpio]

Just saw a talk today about embryonic topoisomerase 2a inhibitors causing autism in zebrafish (through relief of inhibition of the polycomb repressor complex, which methylates histones repressing DNA transcription at an epigenetic level), so possibly avoiding fluoroquinolones could be wise (they aren't as selective for prokaryotic topoisomerase 2a as sold apparently).

 

[Jerry Atrick]

Here is a very interesting analysis of various things to do during pregnancy to potentially maximize your child's IQ and health while minimizing their risk of mental and physical illness.
The analysis includes potential impact on IQ, likelihood that each intervention is accurate, percentage of people that each intervention likely applies to, etc.
It ranges from basic stuff like minimizing stress and avoiding CMV + toxoplasma to lesser known advice (with a ton of evidence) like choline supplementation, avoiding ibuprofen/excessive acetaminophen/painkillers, and minimizing licorice consumption to more out there ideas with poor evidence like high-fruit diets, birth month selection, avoiding handling plastic receipts for long periods of time, etc. Also some interesting stuff on how paternal age affects the health of a child, since usually the focus is on the age of the mother.

The embryo selection seems to be the most interesting by far with a supposed 33% reduction in Type 1 Diabetes and 42.3% reduction in Type 2, but there isn't data on real-world results as of yet.

I see a lot of potential for such interventions, and personally I will probably convince my hypothetical wife to try a couple of these if/when I have children in the distant future. Hopefully embryo selection is widely available by then.

I'm excited to hear what everyone thinks about this.

I see a lot of "nature" in your post but not much "nurture." What about exposing the woman's pregnant belly to classical music? I've heard that can affect a kid's IQ or something to that effect.

 

[arrall]

I see a lot of "nature" in your post but not much "nurture." What about exposing the woman's pregnant belly to classical music? I've heard that can affect a kid's IQ or something to that effect.

Honestly, most of nurture just comes down to parents not abusing their kids. The vast majority of mental illness and almost all drug abuse stems from trauma. Emotional, sexual, and physical abuse are unfortunately rampant in modern society. Because of the link between mental stress and physical health issues (and the fact that virtually all addicts have severe trauma), the vast majority of mental illnesses and a surprisingly large portion of physical illnesses could be averted just by parents confronting their narcissism before having children and treating their kids well.

 

[Jerry Atrick]

Honestly, most of nurture just comes down to parents not abusing their kids. The vast majority of mental illness and almost all drug abuse stems from trauma. Emotional, sexual, and physical abuse are unfortunately rampant in modern society. Because of the link between mental stress and physical health issues (and the fact that virtually all addicts have severe trauma), the vast majority of mental illnesses and a surprisingly large portion of physical illnesses could be averted just by parents confronting their narcissism before having children and treating their kids well.

Damn. I agree with all that but what does it have to do with classical music?

 

[nznity]

Having kids...haha. that's so 1980's-1990's.

 

[arrall]

Damn. I agree with all that but what does it have to do with classical music?

Not much, but while we’re talking about nurture in general it is extremely relevant.

And I believe that the classical music increasing IQ thing has long been debunked.

 

[Jabberwocky]

The embryo selection seems to be the most interesting by far with a supposed 33% reduction in Type 1 Diabetes and 42.3% reduction in Type 2, but there isn't data on real-world results as of yet.

I see a lot of potential for such interventions, and personally I will probably convince my hypothetical wife to try a couple of these if/when I have children in the distant future. Hopefully embryo selection is widely available by then.

*caveat, have not read the article so this may be covered in it....* the issue with embryo selection is that you need an embryo that has/doesn't have the variant you want to include/exclude. that can be a big if, especially for older women with fewer viable eggs left so less choice and if both mother and father are homozygous for that variant it would be basically impossible....

something similar to this is already offered on the NHS, i had the joy of finding out because my family carries a combination of variants that greatly increase chances of certain types of cancer. so the government will fund you a version of IVF that guarantees your offspring don't have the same variants cos its cheaper than treating the offspring later.

now if you just have one variant you wish to select and you are heterozygous (i.e. you have one 'good' copy), that's a coin flip so chances are you will have some good eggs. if you have two genes that you really don't want to pass on, you need 2 heads in a row. i don't actually think in my particular case the 'flips' were completely independent just based on how its gone in my family, there's some incredibly low probability events if they are. also, obviously in sexual reproduction some stuff gets mixed up to make the embryo, so even if you have a million 'bad' variants in an egg you can still get an embryo without them, maybe? i don't know, never studied sexual reproduction i just know its a load of recombination. please if anybody actually knows human genetics correct me and clarify.

for complex traits governed by many genes, you would need to stack up a lot of the 'right' variants in the same embryo. so chances get smaller and smaller.

then we have the issue of many genes having multiple functions. think about the mutation that causes sickle cell but also gives some defence against malaria. its possible that a lot of 'bad' genes actually have subtle effects that lend themselves to positive selection but we haven't figured out all the pathways involved yet.

this is why i think fundamentally human germline editing will win out. but we will make some absolutely devastating mistakes ironing out the details, so i'm glad its not me figuring out the ethics on that one.

re interventions during pregnancy. i'm not sure about those beyond the really obvious, i.e. don't drink or expose yourself to needless risk. maternal stress has a huge impact on babies in utero and after birth, and adding to that with piles of other stuff to do seems like it could be counterproductive.