#057 Aliquot #1: Q&A Mashup - Pregnancy and child development

Rhonda Patrick (0:00)

Hello, friends. Today, we're excited to launch a new members-only podcast, The Aliquot. An aliquot is a sample taken from a larger hole that captures the essence of the entirety. Borrowing a term from the lab bench, that sample or aliquot is most often going to be a personal allotment of a reagent that's being used potentially across multiple experiments, and for that reason, kept near at hand. Our aliquots, however, are members-only podcasts focused on single topics curated and remixed from the best of FoundMyFitness. Some episodes are edited excerpts, highlights and informative moments taken from full interviews in the FoundMyFitness podcast, usually with just a little more context from me. Other episodes are mashups of highlights from my regular members-only Q&As, curated around themes and popular topics like pregnancy, sauna, fasting and more. This first Aliquot episode is a very special mashup highlight edition. It features a compilation of pregnancy and child development related topics taken from several Q&A episodes over the last couple of years. This episode covers a lot of topics including my pre-pregnancy regimen, including diet, exercise, vitamins and sleep. Omega-3 during pregnancy, fish consumption and mercury concerns, which fish to avoid during pregnancy. Allergy-derived versus marine-derived Omega-3 fatty acids. Extra precautions that I took during pregnancy. Choline and the developing brain. My perspectives on nutrition for a baby and toddler that may maximize brain development and growth. The diet and supplements I took or in some cases avoided during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Duration of breastfeeding and the impacts on mother's and child's health. The introduction of solid foods. Common toddler nutritional deficiencies and toddler foods. How exposure to soil in the first year of life may prevent food allergies and asthma. And much more. This is a special preview of the Aliquot Members Only podcast. For a full timeline with time codes for each topic and access to the entire episode, head over to foundmyfitness.com forward slash aliquot. That's A-L-I-Q-U-O-T, aliquot. If you are a premium member, you can also find this entire episode with a timeline on your private podcast feed. Now let's dive in. Hope you enjoy. Can you tell us some of the things that you did to optimize your son's health or development since he was born? I'm a new mom and I would love to know how you've approached diet, supplements, routines, etc. Thank you.

And there are also some tag along questions here that have to do with what the common deficiencies are in toddlers. So I think Andrew asked that question. So I'm gonna talk about that right now. I would say one of the main, main things that I have done is omega-3, high DHA supplementation, both during breastfeeding, during pregnancy, well, starting during pregnancy, but pregnancy, breastfeeding, and then getting pre-formed DHA to my son. And the way I do that is I take one of my high DHA capsules and I cut it open and I put it in his oatmeal with lots of butter and he just eats it up.

So whereas during fetal growth, calories can help promote fetal growth, they're not sufficient for brain development.

Brain development, appropriate neurodevelopment requires a sufficient intake of protein, zinc, iron, choline, folate, iodine, and the omega-3 fatty acids, as well as vitamins A, D, B6 and B12. And if you, failure to provide those key nutrients during that critical period can actually result in long-term brain deficits.

So the common toddler deficiencies, omega-3. So consumption of DHA and EPA from foods contributes, you know, so mostly those are found in marine sources. It's a very small amount, you know, in children. Children are only getting about 40 milligrams of the preformed DHA and EPA.

In 2015, there was a really big study that showed eating fish, actually even fish, you know, the fish that has, particularly fish that was high in omega-3 and low in mercury, it's still even protected against toxic effects of mercury in a developing fetus, which is the most sensitive to mercury. And there was another study, it was published, huge, huge meta study, looked at not only prospective studies, which are associative, can't really establish causation, but they also looked at randomized control trials in children. So the studies looked at pregnant women and also young children. And that were either given fish or having a high intake of fish or not. And it was found that the mothers and children, even in randomized control trials that were given fish, had improved intelligence scores, like significantly improved, even up to like nine points.

And these children also had higher levels of mercury as well, but they had higher levels of DHA, which superseded whatever minor effects the mercury had. Again, we talked about early in the conversation, there are fish that are high in omega-3 and lower in the mercury that you can eat. Things like salmon, wild Alaskan salmon, or like I mentioned, the farmed Atlantic, at least, that's the only one I know of that's farmed salmon. Sardines, herring, mackerel, those fish that are fatty also are high in omega-3, and those ones are lower in mercury. Smaller fish are lower in mercury.