February 3rd, 2010 
Do you have sports star dreams for your unborn child? Well, then plan the baby in such a way that he or she is born in the month of January, claims a researcher.
By studying the seasonal patterns of population health, senior research fellow Dr. Adrian Barnett from Queensland University of Technology’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation concluded that the month you were born in could influence your future health, fitness and sports ability.
The results of the study are published in the Springer book Analyzing Seasonal Health Data, by Barnett, co-authored by researcher Professor Annette Dobson from the University of Queensland.
To reach the conclusion, Barnett analyzed birthdays of professional Australian Football League (AFL) players and found a disproportionate number had their birthdays in the early months of the year, while many fewer were born in the later months, especially December.
The Australian school year begins in January. “Children who are taller have an obvious advantage when playing the football code of AFL,” Dr. Barnett said. “If you were born in January, you have almost 12 months’ growth ahead of your classmates born late in the year, so whether you were born on December 31stor January 1st could have a huge effect on your life.”
Dr. Barnett found there were 33 percent more professional AFL players than expected with birthdays in January and 25 percent fewer in December. He said the results mirrored other international studies which found a link between being born near the start of school year and the chances of becoming a professional player in the sports of ice hockey, football, volleyball and basketball.
“Research in the UK shows those born at the start of the school year also do better academically and have more confidence,” he said. “And with physical activity being so important, it could also mean smaller children get disheartened and play less sport. If smaller children are missing out on sporting activity then this has potentially serious consequences for their health in adulthood.”
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- Prenatal Alchohol, Low Birth Weight Linked to Lifelong Sleep Disturbances
According to a latest study, consuming alcohol during pregnancy and small body size at birth may perhaps predict poorer sleep and increased chances of sleep disorders in 8-year-old children born at term. At least that’s what experts from the organization of American Academy of Sleep Medicine have to say.
These findings are clinically important, as poor sleep and sleep disturbances in children are believed to be linked with various diseases. These seem to include obesity, depressive symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and poor neurobehavioral functioning.
The findings indicated that lower weight and shorter length at birth seemed to be associated with lower sleep efficiency. In addition, a lower ponderal index appears to be related with the presence of sleep disturbances. This index is known to be an indicator of fetal growth status. It was further observed that, children with short sleep duration were more susceptible to have been born through Cesarean section in contrast to children who sleep for a longer period of time.
Chief investigator Katri Raikkonen, PhD, in the department of psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland claimed that even low levels of weekly prenatal exposure to alcohol could have undesirable effects on sleep quantity and quality during childhood.
“The results were in accordance with the fetal origins of health and disease hypothesis and the many studies that have shown that adverse fetal environment may have lifelong influences on health and behavior. However, this is among the few studies that have reported associations between birth variables and sleep quality and quantity among an otherwise healthy population of children.” says Raikkonen.
To better understand this criterion, experts seemed to have collected information from nearly 289 children born at term from 37 to 42 weeks of gestation. Apparently, they objectively measured sleep duration and sleep efficiency with the help of actigraphy at 8 years of age for an average of 7.1 days. Sleep efficiency appears to be the actual sleep time divided by the time in bed. Also, parents were noted to have completed the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children in order to report sleep problems and sleep disorder symptoms such as bedtime resistance and sleep disordered breathing.
The authors claimed that small body size at birth may possibly function as a basic indicator of disturbances in the fetal environment. Supposedly, small body size is associated with prematurity, intrauterine growth retardation, prenatal alcohol exposure and poorer sleep quality in children and young adults.
The findings further demonstrated that amongst children born healthy and at full-term, a direct relationship appears to exist between smaller body size at birth and poorer sleep quality eight years from birth.
The findings of the study revealed that the possibilities for low sleep efficiency seemed to have increased by about 70 percent for every standard variation decrease in weight at birth. Furthermore, it increased by more than 200 percent for every decrease in length. It was estimated that for every standard deviation decrease in ponderal index at birth, the risk of parent-reported sleep disorders increased by 40 percent.
However, associations were not confounded by various factors. These factors included sex, gestational length, prenatal and perinatal complications, body mass index (BMI) at eight years of age, asthma, allergies or parental socioeconomic condition.
The findings of the study have been published in the journal Sleep.
- September is Infant Mortality Awareness Month
September is Infant Mortality Awareness Month. As a country we are failing our babies miserably. Too many never make it to their first birthday. An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide, and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a recent report by Save the Children.
Diving into the report’s stats only darkens the picture: American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month than children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland, or Norway. Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations, tying with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.
Although the newborn mortality rate in the United States has fallen in recent decades, it continues to disproportionately affect people of color, especially African Americans. Only 17 percent of all U.S. births were to African American families, but 33 percent of all low-birth-weight babies were African American, according to the report.
Indeed, the statistics on black babies are the most dismal of all. African Americans have 2.3 times the infant mortality rate of non-Hispanic whites. Black babies are four times as likely to die as infants due to complications related to low birth weight as non-Hispanic white infants. Other sobering statistics from the CDC:
- African Americans had 1.8 times the sudden infant death syndrome mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites, in 2005.
- The infant mortality rate for African American mothers with over 13 years of education was almost three times that of non-Hispanic white mothers in 2005.
This last statistic shows that education does not help protect black babies from poor birth outcomes like it does other ethnic groups, and poses a unique question about how to reverse the tide and save more black babies.
One of the theories being put forth by researchers is that black women tend to enter pregnancy unhealthy and overstressed and cannot reverse years of unhealthy habits and unresolved stress in the 40 weeks of pregnancy. The result is babies who are born too soon or too small – both avoidable outcomes. “In countries where mothers do well, children do well,” Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children, said in a written statement accompanying the report.
As a country we have to figure out how to address this problem. Obviously teaching black women – and all women whose pregnancies are at risk in this country – to live healthier, less stressful lives isn’t going to happen overnight. And I don’t expect the government to figure out how to save our babies, or at least, I’m not willing to wait that long. As mothers, whose lives are all interconnected, we have to figure it out.
I’m going to fight it with the stories I write, the issues I bring up, and the positions I take. I’m also going to fight it with my pocketbook. This month at MochaManual.com we’re donating 50 percent of all our sale proceeds to the March of Dimes to further their research to help all of us have healthier babies. If you want to help me help us, click here to shop our line of maternity and new Dad tees, baby Onesies, gift baskets, and Mocha Manual books to help a worthy cause or just make your own donation to the March of Dimes.
