Reply to Is there an old wives' tale about pregnancy you totally believe?

Forum Index » Expectant and Postpartum Moms

Reply to "Is there an old wives' tale about pregnancy you totally believe?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]from https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-body/pregnancy-health/pregnancy-advice-old-wives-vs-science/

Old Wives Tale Or Science?
If you suffer from heartburn during pregnancy, your baby is likely to be born with a full head of hair.
Answer: Science

"Folksy" sounding but true. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore found that when pregnant women reported moderate heartburn, they had hairy newborns 82 percent of the time; the majority of heartburn-free women gave birth to bald babies.

Surprised? So was the study's lead author, Kathleen a. Costigan, R.N., M.P.H., director of the hospital's Fetal Assessment Center. "I had heard this old wives' tale hundreds of times and used to tell my patients it was nonsense," she says. "We undertook this study thinking that we would debunk the myth!" Researchers surmise that higher levels of estrogen and progesterone, the pregnancy hormones that stimulate fetal hair growth, also relax the esophageal sphincter, allowing stomach acid to back up into the esophagus and cause gastric reflux, aka heartburn.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics