One of the most interesting findings of Dr. Weston-Pryce’s studies of non-industrialized people was their habit of consuming special nutritious foods in preparation for pregnancy. Price wrote in his book “Nutrition and body degenerationthese foods were often considered sacred and were consumed by both men and women for about six months before conception, and then by pregnant and lactating pregnant women.
Parents also fed their children these foods during their growing years. These cultures recognized that a child’s body needed extra nutrition while it was forming and developing.
What were these sacred foods? As Price notes in Chapter 3 of his book (Isolated and Modernized Swiss), in Switzerland, engaged couples and pregnant mothers, when they go to pasture for the first time in I was trying to eat thick yellow butter.
They considered this butter so sacred that ministers placed bowls of spring butter on the altar of their church chapel.
In another chapter, Price points out that many cultures prized liver as a sacred food. A sacred food of the Outer Hebrides was a cod head stuffed with oats and chopped cod liver. Children ate it for breakfast so that they would grow up healthy and strong.
African tribes carried the liver on the tip of a spear, considering it too sacred to touch. In the Southern Ocean, men took great risks to hunt sharks, but mainly to obtain livers for healthy reproduction. I hung it on a tree. The trickle was a type of fermented shark liver oil that was thought to be very important for giving birth to a healthy baby.
Other important foods included eggs and fish eggs. I had several conversations with Asian parents who told me that their grandparents believed eggs and fish eggs would make their children smarter.
What do you notice about these foods? They are all fatty and high in cholesterol. The foods that we are told not to eat were the foods that traditional culture valued most for health, especially for the health of children.
The habit of consuming nutrient-rich foods to prepare for pregnancy aligns very well with what science tells us. No food is as rich in vitamin A as liver, but butter, egg yolks and fish eggs are also good sources.
and landmark paperPublished in 2010, researchers from Michigan State University summarized a study on the role of vitamin A in fetal development. They reported that vitamin A requirements start as early as his second or his third week of conception. This is when heart and brain cell specialization occurs, and often even before you know you’re pregnant. A fetal heart and brain are forming! Without vitamin A, these organs are defective and miscarriage is more likely.
When conception occurs and the embryo begins to develop, it contains undifferentiated stem cells. After 3 weeks, these cells begin to differentiate into specialized cells that develop into the heart, spinal cord, lung, and nervous system. Stem cells differentiate into specialized cells when they receive a signal. That signal is vitamin A.
Each organ system begins development in a specific time frame. Vitamin A regulates the differentiation of primitive cells into cells unique to each organ system. In other words, we give marching orders to the genes so that they “know” where they are and what kind of organization they are going to be. Vitamin A is the “concert master of fetal development”. If vitamin A is deficient in any of these windows, organs develop abnormally or not at all.
During pregnancy, vitamin A continues to aid in the formation of the central nervous, circulatory, genitourinary, and respiratory systems, as well as the development of the skull, skeleton, and limbs. Deficiency can lead to abnormalities and defects.
Vitamin A is particularly important for the development of the eyes, ears, craniofacial region, thymus, thyroid and parathyroid glands.During the second trimester of pregnancy, vitamin A enters the fetal lungs and kidney development.
After all organ systems are formed, vitamin A supports their growth. Chronic vitamin A deficiency during pregnancy puts the liver, heart, and kidneys at risk. impair lung growth Development in the last weeks of pregnancy.
Thus, we can see the innate wisdom of traditional people to accumulate vitamin A before conception and maintain it with vitamin A-rich foods during pregnancy. world.
How to prepare for having a healthy child is exactly what sex education classes should teach, but it’s not. Instead, young people are encouraged to follow a plant-based diet that lacks the nutrients needed to produce a healthy child.
In addition to the traditional sacred food vitamin A Provides Many Other Nutrients You Need For optimal fetal development in utero: vitamins D and K2, vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, biotin, folic acid. One of the amino acids necessary for growth and development is glycine, which you get from bone broth by eating animal skins (avoid skinless chicken breasts!).
These nutrients are needed throughout the growing season for optimal growth and development. Moms and Dads, feed your children right!
Back to vitamin A.More recently, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies not recommended Vitamin A supplementation for pregnant women FDA recommended 8000 International Units (IU) of vitamin A in pregnancy.
of Commonly Cited Studies A paper was published in 1995 supporting vitamin A avoidance during pregnancy. Researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine asked more than 20,000 women to complete a survey about the foods and supplements they took before and during pregnancy.
The data showed that cranial neural crest defects increased with higher doses of vitamin A, whereas neural tube defects decreased with higher vitamin A consumption. , no correlation was found.
The study contains many flaws, so it is no excuse to warn pregnant women against eating liver or taking cod liver oil. They did not distinguish between synthetic vitamin A obtained from processed foods such as corn and margarine and natural vitamin A from food. Also, blood samples were not taken to determine vitamin A status. Another drawback was the fact that their conclusions were based on food recall studies. This can be notoriously inaccurate.
However, the main problem with basing an anti-vitamin A policy on the 1995 study is that it contradicts previous studies that found that high levels of vitamin A did not increase the risk of birth defects. 1998 study from Switzerland Administration of 30,000 IU per day to pregnant women was found to produce blood levels unrelated to congenital anomalies.
a A study conducted in Rome, Italy, 1999 No congenital malformations were seen in infants whose mothers consumed an average of 50,000 IU of vitamin A per day. This is the amount of vitamin A. Some participants took up to 300,000 IU of vitamin A daily during pregnancy and had no birth defects in their offspring.
of the Weston Price Foundation Preconceived notions and diets during pregnancy look like thisButter and eggs from pastured animals, liver about twice a week (think delicious patties and liver sausages), whole milk and cheese, lean meats, seafood, and high-quality ingredients such as homemade bone broth.? Contains dairy.Recommended supplements for natural cod liver oil Vitamins A and D. Along with vitamins D and K2, this diet provides amounts of vitamin A consistent with Roman and Swiss studies.
At the Weston A. Price Foundation, Report of a beautiful and healthy baby Their parents had the wisdom to adopt a nutrient-rich pre- and pregnancy diet. children suffer from serious health problemsthese babies are proof that we can do a better job with our children.
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