CHMP

Ruth Lubic CNM, EdD,is a nurse midwife and applied anthropologist, MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient, and founder of the  DC Birth Center at the DC Developing Families Center.  FHBC/DFC’  is located in the lower-income northeast quadrant of the District of Columbia and consists of a birth center, a case management and social support organization and an early childhood development center. This low-income area in the District of Columbia has high rates of infant and maternal mortality. FHBC/DFC’s core principle is treating women and their families—regardless of race, class or background—as fellow human beings.

They now have a hip hop song produced to shout -out to the world that this health care model works. Recently released, New Dawn for Ruth Lubic is directed by Chad Harper, shot and edited by Johwell St-Cilien for Negusworld film. Chad Harper is the founder and CEO of Hip Hop Saves Lives, a New York nonprofit that writes and sells songs to raise money for clean drinking water in Africa and Haiti.

CHMP senior fellow Meg Olmert is author of Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human–Animal Bond.

The vast majority of our babies are born in hospitals and delivered by medical professionals. Childbirth has become a medical procedure that involves the regular use of synthetic oxytocin to induce labor contractions and analgesics to reduce the pain. Anesthesia is given to the 30% of mothers whose babies are delivered by C-section. Elective C-section—which is performed before the start of labor—is one of the most rapidly increasing surgical procedures. It’s only recently that wisdom and the long-term public health consequences of the medicalization of childbirth have been called into question.

In the mid-1990s researchers in Sweden began investigating the effects of C-section surgery on mothers. It was well known that mothers who had C-section surgery had difficulty breastfeeding. It was also well known that oxytocin, a brain hormone, is responsible for the release of breast milk and the instigation of labor contractions. Epidurals and anesthesia reduce levels of oxytocin in mothers, while surgical delivery eliminates the passage through the birth canal that powerfully triggers oxytocin production in the brain of baby and mother. By comparing blood samples the researchers found that women who delivered by C-section had weaker oxytocin pulses during breastfeeding than mothers who delivered vaginally. The vaginal-delivery mothers also produced more breast milk and reported feeling less anxious and more interested in interacting with those around them than the C-section mothers.

This tracks well with our new realization of oxytocin’s ability to promote maternal and social bonding, our capacity to cope with stress, and fight disease. We also now understand that these social and biological oxytocin advantages are passed from mother to infant during natural childbirth and through high quality, stable maternal care.

Another study comparing babies born by vaginal delivery and C-section showed that vaginally delivered babies were less reactive to pain. Just last month, a team of researchers showed, in rats, that oxytocin released during labor acts as a natural pain-killer. This analgesic effect may have long term consequences on perception of physical and perhaps psychic pain for the rest of our lives. Surgically bypassing the vaginal journey not only deprives the infant of the benefits of prenatal exposure to oxytocin; it prevents the baby from experiencing the massive sympathetic stress response that prepares the lungs for their first breath and activates the inflammatory defense system that will help it survive in the new world.

So, it’s not that surprising to learn that C-section is an established risk factor for later development of asthma and allergy, type 1 diabetes mellitus, childhood leukemia and testicular cancer. In 2009, another Swedish team investigated how C-sections might compromise the immune system of newborns. They analyzed the DNA of white blood cells extracted from umbilical cords of babies delivered by elective C-section and vaginal birth. The white blood cells of surgically delivered babies showed a significantly greater degree of “DNA methylation.” This means a methyl chemical group is added to a particular site of the genome, reducing access to the DNA and diminishing the chance that the gene will ever be activated. We now know that environmental influences—like how we are born or mothered—can exert this kind of dynamic effect on our DNA, resulting in long-term physiological, psychological, and behavioral consequences.

Future studies are needed to see if increased methylation of the DNA of white blood cells as a result of C-section is, in fact, silencing critical immune systems that are linked to the emergence of these common diseases. But even now, enough is known to give serious pause before a doctor recommends or a mother chooses elective Caesarean section.

Senior Fellow Meg Daley Olmert’s latest blog post for Psychology Today looks at social bonding in the time of texting.  You get the gist from her title, Social Notwork? When words fail us: Bonding in the time of texting.

Let’s all put our devices down later today and enjoy some real time with people this weekend.

Have a good one,

Barbara Glickstein

photo credit/monografias.com

Meg Daley Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Center and the author of, Made For Each Other, The Biology of the Human Animal Bond. This is the first book to explain the brain chemistry that flows through—and between—all mammals forging powerful social bonds between the species.

A couple of weeks ago the NIH launched a new public symposium series called OPPNET that will bring together NIH-funded researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to explore a new and long-overdue holistic perspective on basic scientific research.   It was highly appropriate that the first seminar would examine the subject of the mother-infant bond, because we now know what happens to mother affects her baby in ways that not only decide its fate, but can leave a genetic imprint that can last for generations to come.  This nature-nurture effect is called “epi-gentics” and it is a game-changer for science and public health policy too. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo from Washington Post PTSD Article

Hi. I’m Meg Olmert and this is my first posting as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Media and Policy.  My public health focus is on the healing power of the human-animal bond.  A growing body of research shows that friendly contact with animals can reduce heart rate, blood pressure, ease worry, and help us connect with friends and family.  Considering that more than two-thirds of U.S. homes include a pet and pet keeping is on a sharp rise in Asia and throughout the developing world—that’s a lot of hearts and minds that are, or could be, falling under the beneficial neurochemical spell of animals.

In the early 1980s scientists discovered brain chemicals that promote social attraction and attachment–they also happen to lower heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiologic responses to stress and pain. And one in particular—oxytocin—also happens to be a powerful antioxidant.  And so the race was on for big pharma to harness some of the most powerful hormones our brain produce to treat all social ills from shyness to autism.  Sound familiar ladies?

Meanwhile, in the last decade we’ve seen that friendly contact with dogs naturally triggers this brain chemistry in humans.  My quest for the last two decades has been to understand how opening our hearts to animals can safely, immediately, and effectively bolster these brain systems that are essential to our mental and physical well-being.

Here’s a link to read about dogs are doing just that in our soldiers returning from combat with PTSD.  This canine therapy program is called Paws for Purple Hearts, and as its Director of Research, I will oversee a study to measure the body-brain changes these dogs are creating in our Vets.   To learn more about the biology of the human-animal bond, please visit my website.

Meg Daley Olmert is the author of Made For Each Other, The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond (DaCapo, 2009).