Our hearts go out to everyone in Japan. We’ve been watching this tragic disaster unfold on the news since last night, and it’s been devastating to witness all the damage and heartbreak that was wrought by the worst earthquake and tsunamis to slam Japan in a century.
We’ve confirmed that my grandparents and relatives on both sides of our family are safe this morning. Thank you to everyone who has expressed their concern. (For those who are trying to find or reach someone in Japan, as well as those who have information on anyone there, Google has launched a People Finder in the wake of this disaster.)
The Bay Area has issued a tsunami warning and a voluntary evacuation for the coastal areas, and we’re still waiting on BART to make a decision on whether they will halt service this morning (hence why I’m not at work yet). We are pretty sure that the effects on the Bay Area will be pretty minimal, but it’s still unnerving.
Japan is still experiencing heavy aftershocks and of course faces a grave crisis and a long road to recovery and rebuilding from the widespread calamitous damage and destruction. Please continue to keep Japan in your thoughts and prayers, and find out how you can help.
When you’re newly pregnant for the first time, you find yourself faced with an overwhelming number of things you should and should not be doing during pregnancy, and at times different sources say different and even conflicting things. Since it’s a totally new experience, you want to do everything “right” for your baby, but it can be trying to keep up with all the guidelines and opinions that are being pushed towards you from every which direction. Don’t drink alcohol and coffee, don’t smoke, don’t eat raw fish, don’t eat deli meat, don’t eat fish that could contain mercury; do take your prenatal vitamins, eat healthy, exercise in moderation… most of this is common knowledge today. We’re fortunate that we live in an age where we know how so many of our actions and what we put in our bodies can affect the fetus (two generations ago, expectant mommies were smoking and drinking away — can you believe it?) so that we can take preventative measures during pregnancy, but it does get a bit stressful to constantly have to be paranoid and second-guessing yourself with every thing you drink, eat, and do during those nine months.
Some of my girlfriends and I were talking about pregnancy this past weekend, and a couple of them recommended an article that was recently the cover story for TIME Magazine. Titled Fetal Origins: How The First Nine Months Can Shape the Rest of Your Life, it was a really interesting article about how researchers have been finding evidence that our susceptibility to and predisposition to certain diseases and conditions that often don’t appear until much later in life — such as heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness, and depression — can be traced back to our fetal origins: the first nine months of our lives, which we spent in our mothers’ wombs. It’s widely accepted that the environment and diet you are raised with as a young child has a significant bearing on whether or not you’ll have some of these conditions later in life, but I was surprised to find out that the fate of your health can be traced to even further back in your developmental life. Two decades ago, the hypothesis was scoffed and laughed at, but there’s been a lot of research and findings since then that have come to support this theory, and it’s now causing a revolutionary shift in science which brings pregnancy into the forefront as a critical time in which an individual’s lifelong health may be determined.
The effect your pregnancy has on the unborn baby goes much further beyond some of the more trivial things that baby-obsessed expectant mothers concern themselves with:
The notion of prenatal influence may conjure up frivolous attempts to enrich the fetus: playing Mozart to a pregnant belly and the like. In reality, the shaping and molding that goes on in utero is far more visceral and consequential than that. Much of what a pregnant woman encounters in her daily life — the air she breathes, the food and drink she consumes, the chemicals she’s exposed to, even the emotions she feels — is shared in some fashion with her fetus. The fetus incorporates these offerings into its own body, makes them part of its flesh and blood.
Often it does something more: it treats these maternal contributions as information, biological postcards from the world outside. What a fetus is absorbing in utero is not Mozart’s Magic Flute but the answers to questions much more critical to its survival: Will it be born into a world of abundance or scarcity? Will it be safe and protected, or will it face constant dangers and threats? Will it live a long, fruitful life or a short, harried one?
I encourage those who are interested to read the entire article, but it goes on to cite examples of how some of the poorest regions of England were prone to cardiovascular diseases (which is traditionally associated with an affluent background), because of malnutrition during pregnancy that led to infants being born with weakened hearts. Areas that are marked by air pollution caused their inhabitants to often produce babies that were born prematurely or with heart malformations. The mother’s exposure to carcinogens can also increase their child’s predisposition to cancer later in life. Obesity and heavy weight gain during pregnancy has been linked to the child facing weight problems and Type 2 diabetes years later; abnormal levels of stress and anxiety experienced by the mother can also cause their kids to be susceptible to mental illness and depression in their older years.
My best friend sent me an article from the New York Times a few weeks ago that also talked about how fetal origins can determine an individual’s course in life, but it was more general, bringing in educational attainment and success in society into the picture — but the basic premise is the same; that stress encountered in the womb can put a child at a disadvantage much later in life, and it shows that the repercussions stretch beyond health conditions:
Perhaps the most striking finding is that a stressful uterine environment may be a mechanism that allows poverty to replicate itself generation after generation. Pregnant women in low-income areas tend to be more exposed to anxiety, depression, chemicals and toxins from car exhaust to pesticides, and they’re more likely to drink or smoke and less likely to take vitamin supplements, eat healthy food and get meticulous pre-natal care.
The result is children who start life at a disadvantage — for kids facing stresses before birth appear to have lower educational attainment, lower incomes and worse health throughout their lives. If that’s true, then even early childhood education may be a bit late as a way to break the cycles of poverty.
Some may find all this depressing, to find that one’s future can be so heavily affected from before they even have a chance to step out into the world, but overall, I think all of the research on fetal origins is fascinating and exciting. In the TIME article, a researcher envisions a future in which expectant mothers in will be prescribed supplements that will protect their children from getting cancer. The more we know about how life and development in the uterine environment can influence and shape our children’s future, the more we will be able to prepare and protect them to have fuller, healthier lives.
Today marks 65 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific, and the lives lost can only be estimated but it numbers in the hundred thousands. The attacks over sixty years were the first and only instances thusfar in which nuclear weapons have been used offensively in warfare.
As the granddaughter of a Hiroshima survivor (hibakusha), I’ve heard firsthand stories from my grandmother about the atrocity that befell the city that day. Her father was killed, along with many of her family members and friends. The atomic bomb not only took away countless lives, but it continues to have long-lasting effects… some genetic, that are passed on through the generations. Even I myself am not completely free from risk of unforeseen radiation effects, as the blood of a survivor runs through my veins.
Still, the constant message that is central at the Hiroshima Peace Park and at its yearly memorial services on August 6 is not that of bitterness, but of the city’s unending hope for world peace. Hiroshima is an important reminder that the world should never have to experience such a nuclear nightmare ever again.
This past month has been intense with all the excitement of the World Cup — I know it’s been keeping me glued to ESPN and on the edge of my seat for many a game — but it all came to an end today with the World Cup Final, as Spain emerged as the victors over the Netherlands to become the World Cup 2010 Champions!
Congratulations to Spain! Holland did really well this World Cup too, but this time it just wasn’t in the cards…. Â (Although they did win for getting the most yellow cards in any game I’ve ever seen.) Congratulations to Paul the Octopus as well, the cephalopod who has gotten 8 out of 8 of his predictions this tournament right! He has become an international sensation of sorts. 🙂
Seeing this little octopus making “Breaking News” on CNN and causing such a stir this World Cup got me wondering if either of our very own pet chinchillas had any psychic abilities of his own. Here we are putting Diesel to the test this morning, shortly before the game:
Unfortunately, the only thing Diesel ended up proving was that he is not cut out to be a psychic chinchilla. 🙁 His quest for fame will have to be rewarded by some other means….
It was a sad day for the Samurai Blue and the motherland today, as they lost to Paraguay after the score remained a sterile stalemate at 0-0 throughout the match and through the extra time, leading to a penalty kick shootout to determine who would advance to the Final 8.
The world stood still as they watched this World Cup’s first shootout. Japan lost in the PKs, as they missed a goal while Paraguay nailed all five of theirs.
It was definitely a difficult loss to swallow, both for the Japanese national teams and all of their fans, since it is such a frustrating way to get taken out of the World Cup.
Ultimately, though, I think that Japan performed much better than what the world had expected of them, and they were able to show other countries that they are a force to be reckoned with. They seem to have won a lot of  non-Japanese fans over in the course of the past couple weeks as well! 🙂
Four years is a long wait, but I can’t wait to see the Samurai Blue take on the field on the world stage once again in 2014 in Brazil.
In the meantime, it’ll be fun to sit back and watch which team will rise up to become the champions this year.