Posted on 11/28/2002 7:01:54 AM PST by vannrox
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Frequent sex reduces pregnancy complications |
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| 09:40 25 November 02 | |||
| Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition | |||
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Low fertility and frequent pregnancy complications may be the price that humans have paid for evolving a large brain.
For the fetus to get enough nutrients to grow a hefty brain the placenta has to aggressively invade a mother's uterus, says a new theory. But that can also provoke her immune system, causing dangerous complications.
However, recent research suggests that exposure to a man's semen helps a women's immune system prepare for pregnancy (New Scientist print edition, 9 February, p 32). So low rates of conception in humans reduce complications during pregnancy by giving a woman's immune system more time to adapt.
Human fetuses spend 60 per cent of their energy on their brain, three times as much as other mammals. Twenty weeks into pregnancy, the placenta attacks the uterine wall for a second time, burrowing in more deeply than in any other mammal.
But burrowing deeper is risky. It can provoke the mother's immune system to attack the placenta, which is loaded with foreign genes from the father. This can trigger pre-eclampsia, where the placenta leaks toxins into the mother's circulation, causing blood pressure to spike dangerously. Within hours it can escalate into kidney failure, brain haemorrhaging and death.
It is thought that humans are the only mammals to suffer frequent pre-eclampsia, which occurs in three per cent of pregnancies. We are also far less fertile: a bitch that mates just once when it is on heat usually gets pregnant, yet women typically take six months to conceive.
Research by Pierre-Yves Robillard, a neonatologist at Sud Réunion Hospital on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, has shown that women who have sex with the father for over a year before getting pregnant have a five per cent chance of developing high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia compared with a massive 40 per cent chance for those who have only been having sex with the father for four months or less.
Robillard is now proposing that this is why we are less fertile - the extra sex gives women a better chance of surviving the placental invasion. "If we had kept the same fertility as other mammals, we would have pre-eclampsia rates of 20 per cent," he told a workshop about pre-eclampsia in Mauritius. "Humans could not have survived."
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I don't know about pregnancy complications but it sure does seem to make me a tad more chipper than usual. |
My wife is two months pregnant right now. She was completely laid out with nausea and fatigue, until our midwife prescribed pills with Calcium Carbonate/B6/B12/Folic Acid. It is called "Premesis". The B6 apparently stops the nausea and the Folic Acid is a strong formulation to aid the fetus.
It completely eliminated her nausea and she is active again. It is amazing. Look into it.
Will that work for a hangover too?
Far be it from me to be skeptical of such a study, however.
When planning our family (three healthy little girls & no pre-eclamptic problems), I'd heard all about the dangers of pre-eclampsia and saw a study that insinuated this from an article in Cosmopolitan. It pointed out that mothers-to-be NEED all the sperm from their MATE that they can get in their bloodstream in order to get his genes into her system so that the fetus gains a genetic ballance from both parents. Thus, the importance that all of the sperm come from the same male. No need to go getting slutty, girls, it only works with the one man who is fathering the child. Getting slutty and mixing male genes will only confuse your system and is likely to cause problems in pregnancy rather than prevent them.
Fortunately, the mother has two choices of how to get that into her bloodstream, as either intercorse or oral will do the trick (Hence, the more "Earthy" terminology, "Up the snatch or down the hatch")...She doesn't have to wear herself out in the sack. She just needs to get all she can get and as often as she can get it from one man.
Now, for those playboys out there who think this study was their key to con women into the sack, how does it sound when it means you're only getting it if it's ONE WOMAN allowing you??? Sounds a bit like ""COMMITMENT", doesn't it?
:)
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