What makes us healthy? Some more research ...

What affects our health?

This blog is an extended version of my column on 20 March 2012. It includes references at the end and further examples.

My core point is that the evidence is that maternal behaviours do have a long-term effect on children and that these, where negative, can have irremediable life-long effects. So I believe that early intervention as presently described is very often already too late. The proposed reports to parents on progress at age 2 are a positive step but still too late.

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The column
Does pre-birth maternal behaviour have a long-term effect on children? This important question seems difficult to answer, with many variables that can impact on long-term health outcomes such as poverty, housing, childhood diseases, and schooling. But it turns out that there is a large population carrying out a controlled test, and for which there is overwhelming evidence of a direct effect, and that relates to fasting during Ramadan. A foetus in its first month with a fasting mother is more than 20% more likely to suffer from visual, hearing or learning disabilities as an adult. And the effect is magnified when Ramadan falls in a summer month, with a longer period of fasting, and also when the mother lives further from the equator, when the day length is greater.