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Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken.
But what if the real work isn't physical at all?
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What if mind control is real?
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.
Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both?
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And so 90 of mothers today are eating a diet that is not giving them the right nutrients for their baby to grow.
Your diet during pregnancy is calibrating things in your child.
It's setting his metabolism, the number of brain cells he has.
It's setting his resilience or his sensitivity to disease.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed.
Today's guest is us welcoming back one of your favorites.
When she came on the show last time, she absolutely made an impact on each and every one of you.
I know so many of you commented, shared and messaged in saying how much her advice has changed your life.
She's changed my life for the better, my wife's, our parents, everyone that we know, when we've been talking about her advice.
Today I'm talking again to the one and only glucose goddess biochemist, bestselling author and viral science teacher, Jessie Inshope, whose work reaches millions of people around the world and has transformed how we think about food and health.
Jessie is here to talk about her new book Nine Months That Count Forever How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future.
Releasing March 17th.
If you haven't already ordered it, make sure you get it right now, as you're listening to this conversation.
If you're expecting, or hope to be, one day.
The Science Back guide reveals how what you eat during pregnancy doesn't just affect you.
It can shape your child's health for a lifetime.
Please welcome back to On Purpose, Jessie.
Jessie, it is so great to have you back.
Thank you so much for having me back, Jake.
And thank you for calling me a science teacher.
That makes me happy.
I mean, your resume is amazing, but you're a dear friend.
And you know, last time you came on we were just getting to know each other and we hit it off so well.
We just ended up hanging out and talking.
And this book I know means so much to you.
And it's been such an incredible journey for you.
You were just showing me a beautiful video of your baby boy.
And this journey is one that I don't think gets talked about enough.
And as a man who... will never get pregnant and not experience what it feels like.
I've definitely seen how so many of my friends feel misinformed, so many feel under-informed, so many feel misled.
But the biggest thing I think that I want to start with is so many people feel that you can eat whatever you want when you're pregnant.
There's really no rules.
Why do you disagree with that?
There are many myths around pregnancy.
That's one of them.
There's the myth that you should eat for two.
The myth that you're going to gain weight anyway.
So it's the perfect time to eat all the stuff you never, usually eat and that you don't think you should eat because they're not good for you.
There's another myth around your baby will get what he needs from you.
And I think the main myth, Jay, is that when you're pregnant... you have a bun in the oven.
Have you heard that expression before?
I've heard that expression, yes.
So I was told when I was pregnant by people in the street, oh, you have a bun in the oven.
And I think this is where most of our problems start.
Because, as I was thinking about this metaphor, I thought there's so many things wrong with this sentence.
First, it implies that as the mom, you are an oven, meaning...
No, seriously, that you are this passive box of heat and time.
It implies that when you're pregnant, all you got to do is keep the temperature at the right temperature and just wait.
And then it also implies something a bit more subtle.
Because if you bake something like if you're making I don't know a brownie, the moment you put the brownie in the oven it's going to stay a brownie.
The oven doesn't change the recipe, right?
So it implies that your baby...
The moment that the sperm meets the egg.
It implies that at that point the baby is set in stone and that all you got to do is wait and let nature do its thing and the baby is going to come out.
I learned in the science that actually what happens during the nine months, and specifically what you eat during the nine months, co-creates the baby.
So if you eat two different diets, a different baby will come out.
Your diet during pregnancy is calibrating things in your child.
It's setting his metabolism, the number of brain cells he has.
It's setting his resilience or his sensitivity to disease.
It's like you are a co-creator when you're pregnant.
You're not an oven.
A better metaphor is...
Being soil out of which your baby is a little seed growing.
Like you have a beautiful garden, right?
If I were to give you a seed for an apple tree and I said, Jay, you have two options.
You can plant this seed in your driveway, where it's just rocks and gravel, or you can plant it in the soil in the sun.
You know intuitively you should plant it in the soil in the sun.
Because even if that seed has the same genetic plan, where you plant, it is going to determine how it adapts and what it becomes.
And as the mom, you're the soil.
And it's a lot of responsibility, for sure.
And I felt that too.
But the science I discovered helped me navigate that responsibility more easily.
And that's what I want to share with people today.
Is it simple enough for someone who's not educated on this, ie myself?
Is it simple enough to be able to say this food links to this and this food links to this?
Like, is it that obvious?
It is that simple.
Really?
Yeah, it is that simple.
Wow.
So in the studies I discovered these four main nutrients that have a outsized effect on your baby's long-term health during pregnancy.
The first one is glucose.
Glucose, we meet again.
So the amount of glucose circulating in your bloodstream during pregnancy is going to program your baby's DNA to be more or less vulnerable to type 2 diabetes later in life.
Second one is choline.
Choline is found in eggs and it builds your baby's brain.
And we know that if there's not enough choline in a brain during pregnancy well, the brain will be formed with fewer neurons.
Neurons are the brain cells that process information.
Third one is protein.
During pregnancy, you need to eat more protein than usual.
And animal studies show us that if you have too little protein, the baby comes out smaller and with a setting to keep his muscle mass low for life.
Wow.
Yes.
And the fourth one is omega-3s.
Omega-3s are a type of fat that come from algae in the ocean.
And this fat also builds a baby's brain.
And we see, for example, studies that show that if you have enough omega-3s during pregnancy, you can measure a higher IQ in a baby at four years old.
No.
Yes.
So...
As I was discovering this, I was making that same face.
I was like, what?
Why is there such a gap between what science knows and what parents are told?
And that's the gap that I'm hoping to bridge because this stuff is essential.
So Einstein's mom basically had an amazing diet.
Well, who knows?
Maybe she didn't know this stuff.
I think back in the day, they ate a little more organ meats and foods with higher nutrition.
So maybe she did have a better diet.
Because the problem is today, most of us are eating a diet of processed foods.
It's not our fault.
The food industry, marketing messages.
And so 90 of mothers today are eating a diet that is not giving them the right nutrients for their baby to grow.
Yeah.
So 90% of moms today are missing one of these crucial nutrients.
For choline, it's 90% of moms are not getting enough.
For protein, it's 70%.
For omega-3s, it's 75%.
And for glucose.
Well, most moms today eat three times the recommended amount of sugar during pregnancy.
And it's not their fault, Jay.
This is really important.
The food industry or food landscape has created this toxic environment.
And we're all trying to eat as well as we can, but the system has failed us.
What's the negative impact of, for example, the three times the glucose, not enough of the omega-3s, not enough protein?
How bad can it get?
And what are the sad experiences that mothers are having during and post-pregnancy, that they may not even be connecting to those things?
So for choline, for example, we know that when moms have very low levels of choline it can lead to more brain defects that can end in miscarriage.
Doctors will often tell you about folate.
This is the only thing my doctor told me.
He said, take a folate supplement.
Everybody talks about this.
And it's because low folate levels are also linked to higher risk of miscarriage.
Nobody talks about choline, but it's just as important.
So that's a main one.
In terms of choline, like if you don't have enough choline, your baby will be fine, right?
Maybe his brain will be formed a little bit less optimally, but we'll be fine.
My mom didn't eat any eggs when she was pregnant with me.
When it comes to glucose, if you have a very high sugar diet during pregnancy and if your blood glucose levels are very high, we know that it means that your baby will be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
For example, there is this condition called gestational diabetes, which means the diabetes of pregnancy, which means just having very high blood sugar during pregnancy.
And when we look at the kids of moms who have gestational diabetes, 21 of the kids will have developed diabetes by age 22, versus 4 of kids of moms who did not have gestational diabetes.
And this is a big deal Jay, because if you develop diabetes as a teenager, you have 15 years of life just knocked off.
You're on average going to live 15 fewer years than your peers.
And there's all these incredible studies done on millions of women, statistics like this that are mind-blowing.
Even siblings, Jay.
If one was developing in the womb of the mother when she had gestational diabetes and if he has a sibling that was developing in the womb when the mom did not have diabetes, the sibling developing during the diabetes has a four-time increased risk in developing himself diabetes in his lifetime.
So what's going on?
Like, why is this going on?
So one of the main things we need to understand about pregnancy is that, while your baby's DNA is set in stone when the sperm meets the egg, there's something else that is not set in stone.
And that's called epigenetics.
It's a complicated word, but it simply means that there are these tiny little microscopic switches, like the dimmer switch on the light, that control our genes.
And that's a this gene more activated, this gene more silenced.
Epigenetics, switches on your baby's DNA.
And these epigenetics, where do they come from?
They come from the environment that you provide during pregnancy.
So as a pregnant mom, you are programming your child's DNA with what you eat.
And in particular, when it comes to diabetes.
We see that moms with very high glucose levels have babies who have the genes linked to diabetes that are activated at birth.
And this setting can stay with them for life.
So it's like the moment they're born, they're born with this innate vulnerability to that condition.
So that's choline and glucose.
For protein now.
This is fascinating, and I know you're vegan, so I think protein is a big one for you.
Okay, so animal studies show us that if a mom doesn't have enough protein during pregnancy, even if she has enough calories.
So it's not about she doesn't have enough food.
It's specifically she doesn't have enough protein.
This is in animal studies.
They see that the babies are born with epigenetic switches that say, keep your muscle mass small.
It's as if Low protein during pregnancy is sending a message to my baby, saying to him hey baby, you're going to be born into a world with not a lot of protein.
So you should keep your muscle mass small.
Wow.
So he's getting a message.
Your baby's getting information about the world he's going to be born into with what you're eating during pregnancy.
He can't see anything.
He can kind of hear through the water, but, you know, it's muffled.
And he's like, what kind of world am I being born into?
Because as he's creating his organs, his brain from scratch, he needs information.
And your diet is providing information.
So if you have a very low protein diet, your baby's going to think okay, I got to create my body and set up myself in a way that I'm going to survive optimally in a low protein world.
This moment of pregnancy is preparing him for the rest of his life.
Is there a recommended protein amount for pregnant moms?
Yes.
So for a long time, it was too low.
And recent studies that are using a very fancy new technique have found that it's 50 higher than we thought.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
Because when you think about it, protein is not just muscle.
So many things in your body are protein, like your immune system, like the molecules that make up your skin, like all of your hormones.
I
So basically we now know that during pregnancy you need about 15 or 16 grams of protein per day per kilo of body weight.
So that's about 100 grams of protein, give or take.
Today, 75% of moms are not getting that amount.
So most of us are sending a signal to our baby, without even knowing we're doing that of there's not a lot of protein in the world you're about to be born into.
And when I was reading the science I was like huh, I have these two friends, Gabriel and Nicholas, okay.
They have kind of the same diet and they do pretty much the same exercise.
One builds muscle mass super easily and the other one struggles so much to put on muscle.
And I was wondering well, maybe one of the reasons is their programming from the womb when they were in their mother's belly.
Yeah.
So we're not equal.
Like who we are today, you and me, we're going to be more or less vulnerable to things, depending on what happened when our mom was pregnant with us.
Yeah.
And you can feel that as well.
As you were saying certain things, I'm like, I need to go ask my mom what she was eating.
That's what I did.
Did you do that?
I called her.
I was like, mom, okay.
So I have this little list here.
How much choline did you have?
How many eggs?
She was like, no, it was the 90s, honey.
Like in the 90s, we only ate sugar and low-fat foods.
Oh, man, that's why.
That makes sense.
That's why you're so smart.
Maybe it was because my mom only ate sugar and special K when she was pregnant.
We don't know.
We're never going to know.
But all the animal studies, the decades of studies on animals that we have, point to the fact that what happens during pregnancy sets up a baby for life.
And it's very clear.
If you were talking to a room full of pregnant moms right now who are just starting their journey.
They're nine months old.
They're all going to take a copy of your book away home because it's going to help them through the next nine months.
What's the first thing you'd want them to know today that's going to shift the next nine months?
I would say, the first three months don't worry about anything.
I'm saying because nausea is usually so bad that you can't eat anything of remote nutritional value.
Is there any way of avoiding that nausea?
There's nothing.
Well, if it's really bad, there's medication you can take.
But for most of us, you just have to wait it out.
There's a little few things you can do.
You can make sure your blood sugar levels are balanced.
So use all of my hacks from my previous work.
Mm-hmm.
Protein in the morning.
Protein basically all the time.
It's the only thing that can help really balance the nausea.
I would even keep some almonds by the side of my bed and have them before I got up.
Like I would literally open my eyes, not move.
Put my hand to the side, grab 10 almonds, put them in my mouth and then get up.
Like that's how bad it was.
You could do that.
Ginger helps.
Exercise also helps actually.
But mostly it just sucks, man.
It just sucks.
Did you try anything that was crazy or like a myth and then busted it and realized this doesn't work for sure?
I was like I'm the glucose freaking goddess and I know all this stuff, and all I've been able to eat for the past month is croissant and pain au chocolat.
That sounds amazing.
No, it's because carbs were the only thing that didn't make me want to throw up.
But for the first three months, you're okay.
Well, the first three months...
You do what you can.
If you're not nauseous, use everything in this book.
And what I would say to pregnant moms is, okay, first trimester is kind of unique.
Do what you can.
Then I would say eat four eggs a day, because four eggs are going to give your baby all the choline that he needs.
Two, make sure you have a protein at every single meal.
This is going to give your baby enough protein.
Three, have fish or supplement with omega-3s.
I did that every day.
Two grams of omega-3s every day, which is more than you might think.
And four, watch your sugar.
Because cravings are strong during pregnancy.
That's what I was about to say.
So the cravings is not a myth.
That's a real thing.
Depending on who you are, you're going to have different cravings.
Like I was craving kiwis.
And red meat.
And you don't love kiwis in general.
I don't care about kiwis.
I've never wasted kiwis.
Explain that to me.
How does that happen?
Well, okay, so the theory... I always thought it was just like a fun thing that movies made up.
No, the theory goes... And strawberries.
I could eat... pounds of strawberries.
No reason.
I don't even really like strawberries.
I don't care.
The theory goes that your body is making cravings that have to do with things that you're missing in your diet.
So for example, why was I craving strawberries and kiwi?
Maybe because of the vitamin C. Some moms crave pickles.
Why?
And scientists believe they know why because pickles contain salt and iodine, and iodine is very important during pregnancy.
So I was craving red meat because I was very low in iron.
So maybe the red meat was a way of getting iron.
We don't really know.
A lot of this stuff is a mystery, Jay.
Like, first of all, we can't really run a lot of studies on pregnant moms.
Yeah, of course.
So it's a little bit complicated.
And second, we know some things, but a lot of stuff we don't really understand yet.
It's a miracle that you're building another human in your body.
I mean, wow.
Yeah.
So I would say four eggs a day, enough protein, supplement with omega-3s and watch your sugar.
Try to stay under the recommendation of the World Health Organization, which is 25 grams of sugar or less per day.
Now, this is something we need to unpack.
25 grams of sugar is not a lot.
It's the amount of sugar in one glass of orange juice, in like half a chocolate bar or in two cookies.
It's not a lot.
Yeah.
And most moms today.
The surveys show that they actually eat more sugar when they're pregnant than when they're not pregnant.
Two reasons for this.
One, cravings.
And some studies on rats show that when you're pregnant, you get more enjoyment out of sugar.
It's like your brain rewires and you get more dopamine when you eat sugar than before.
I don't even need to get pregnant to know that.
I'm like, sugar is like my, what do you call it?
It's like my, not guilty pleasure.
It's like my butt.
Yeah, that's the right word.
It's taken me years to train myself for sugar.
So imagine when you're pregnant, your brain is like.
Well, the animal studies show that your brain might be just more sensitive.
So the same cookie is bringing you more enjoyment.
So it's like, it's intense.
You have to deal with that.
And then there's society telling you oh, you're pregnant, eat for two, you know, have more sugar, have a cookie, etc.
What are you actually eating for?
That idea of you're eating for two, are you just eating for one?
You're eating for like 1.2.
Right.
So the double is a mistake because you could overdose on the sugar.
It's a total myth.
Like, for example, for glucose.
So glucose comes from carbs.
So like bread, pasta, rice or cake and fruit.
Those are foods that contain glucose.
They're called carbohydrates, carbs.
You might think, oh, I'm pregnant.
I need to eat like way more pasta, way more sugar.
You don't.
The studies show us that in the very end of pregnancy, when your baby's about to be born so he's as big as he's going to get he only needs a very small amount of glucose per day.
70 grams of glucose per day.
That's about the amount of glucose in a cup and a half of rice.
That's it.
At the very end of pregnancy, you need one cup and a half of rice extra per day.
At the beginning of pregnancy, you need no extra glucose.
Second trimester, very little.
So we need to tell people about this very important information.
And you might think Jay okay well, if a baby needs 70 grams of glucose, surely he just takes that and he doesn't take more.
Mm-hmm.
This is another misconception.
Your baby does not just take what he needs.
Your baby takes what is there.
If there's more glucose in your bloodstream than he needs, he's going to also register more glucose in his body than what he needs.
So that's why we see that at birth, some babies have super, super high glucose levels and others have normal glucose levels, because it's all dependent on the mom's own glucose levels.
You're connected.
Right.
You're connected.
It's like if it's high in your blood, it's going to be high in your baby's blood.
If it's low in your blood, it's going to be low in your baby's blood.
If you don't eat any eggs or any choline whatsoever, your baby is not going to get enough.
And that's the whole point.
You have to learn about this stuff because nobody's telling you, unfortunately.
Yeah.
I can't believe that this hasn't become necessary learning in life.
I remember people always talk about this idea of you go to the hospital and You give birth and then you come home with a human being and there's no exam, there's no test, there's no education.
You know, we obviously have to take a driving test, right?
We take exams to get jobs.
It just feels like having a baby feels bigger and harder than all of those things.
I think you'd think that because it's biological, you just know how to do it.
And you'd think that society would naturally support it to the best of its abilities.
But actually the food around us today is failing moms.
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on?
Biggie.
You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
Because I want to get confident.
This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy.
A new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist, that asks one simple question.
Who do you want to be and what's the song that can take you there?
Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right?
That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts.
This year.
I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon Gene Chatzky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Groves and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone Questlove.
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This isn't just a podcast.
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What is one thing about love you've had to unlearn that it's earned?
That it needs to be forever for it to count.
February is the month of love.
Whether you're in a relationship, casually dating or proudly single, it's a great time to reflect on yourself and what you want.
I'm Hope Woodard, host of the VoiceOver podcast, and each week this month we're looking at love from every angle.
I don't know how to tell my partner like what I want in bed.
The thing about romantic fiction I would say, more than any other genre of culture, is that it's always put women first.
My marriage stopped making sense.
The connection started to feel off.
The behavior started to feel different.
This February, get in touch with yourself by listening to Boy Sober.
That's B-O-Y-S-O-B-E-R.
I'm like, I would love to not hate the man I'm sleeping with.
I don't know what that's about.
Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When you look at your car you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
Can you get someone to join your cult?
Nlp was used on me to access my subconscious.
Nlp, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics and psychology.
Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
It's about engineering consciousness.
Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.
He stood trial for murder and got acquitted.
The biggest mind game of all?
NLP might actually work.
This is wild.
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
If someone is eating a diet of processed foods, they're obviously not getting all these key markers before that you keep telling us.
What's happening to that baby?
What kind of nutrients is it getting?
It's getting what it can.
The mother's reserves are going to be depleted up to a point.
There's a limit because biology will always favor the mom staying alive.
So all of the mom's choline is going to get given to the baby, but up to a point.
The mom's muscle mass is going to start shedding to give the baby protein.
The mom's omega-3 reserves are going to go all to the baby, but again, with a limit.
If you don't eat any of these foods, your baby will not get enough, quite simply.
And I mean, same with sugar, right?
It's like if you eat a lot of sugar, your baby's going to be processing a lot of sugar.
Now, humans are resilient and nature has a way.
And so the baby will probably be fine, probably.
But you're silently setting up that baby for more vulnerability.
You're silently programming his genes a bit more towards disease.
You're probably shaping his brain in a way that's not optimal.
For example, the brain.
So today, Jay, you have about 100 billion neurons in your brain.
Can you feel them?
No.
I hope they're there.
So you have about 100 billion neurons.
And these are the brain cells that connect information, that process information.
These are the same neurons that you had the day you were born.
Neurons never get replaced.
They stay with you from the moment you're born until you die.
So they're getting older.
They're getting older.
And, most importantly, all your neurons give or take 5 were created when your mom was pregnant with you.
And choline and omega-3s are super important to creating those neurons.
And so, depending on how much choline and omega-3s your mom was having, your brain will be shaped differently.
In the studies done on animals again, because we can do this in humans, scientists will reduce the amount of choline and omega-3s in the mom's diet.
And then when the baby's born, they look at the brain very, very closely under the microscope.
And they see that if there's very low levels of choline, The babies have fewer neurons and a smaller brain.
And they see that if the baby had very low levels of omega-3s in the womb, when they put the baby through some tests to see intelligence and how quickly they can get out of mazes for example, the babies with very low omega-3s in the womb take four times as long to find the maze exit.
No way.
So you probably don't know it, but you're walking around with a brain that has a few cracks because of your mom not having enough choline and DHA.
Why are you assuming that?
And listen, me too, right?
Most of our moms were a generation that was not given this information.
And again, the food system has been failing them.
Do you recommend people getting those from supplements or from food?
And what does that look like?
Food is always better absorbed and always cheaper.
However, if you don't eat any animal foods, you should take the supplements.
It's just going to be much easier.
For example, choline.
So four eggs a day is the amount you need for your baby.
If you're vegan, that would mean you have to eat vegetables.
Eight pounds of soybeans per day.
Eight pounds to get enough choline.
So take a supplement.
Yeah, right.
That'd be way, way easier.
Yeah.
Way easier.
For omega-3s, you can only find them in fish or in algae or krill.
So if you're vegan, you want to take some supplements made from algae.
Mm-hmm.
Now I still supplemented with extra omega-3s and extra choline, just because I wanted to put as much as I could there.
But supplements are great.
But again, like if you're only supplementing, the molecules are still going to be a bit less well absorbed than if you take the real food.
Is there any way of knowing whether all of what you did has helped your son?
I mean, he's wonderful.
He's very smart, super awake, like éveillé, which means like just, you know, he's really present.
Is there any way I could know?
I don't think so.
There's nothing right now that you can test or know from, to know that it's had a positive impact.
Well, in the studies, they can test this.
For example, they take two groups of moms.
One group they supplement with choline and the other group with a bit less choline.
What they do is they measure the kids' reaction time on these computer tests in the first year of life.
And the reason scientists do this test is because it correlates to adult IQ.
And they see that babies developing in the womb with more choline have faster reaction times on that test, meaning they probably are going to have higher adult IQ.
But me personally, there's nothing I can do because I'm not designing a perfect experiment.
I didn't clone myself and say OK, Jesse A is going to do this diet, Jesse B, this diet, same baby, and we're going to see what happens.
I have no idea.
And pregnancy is not everything, right?
If my son decides all he's going to eat for the rest of his life is Nutella and orange juice, he's probably going to get diabetes.
So it is an important window of calibration, but I don't know what's going to happen.
I just know that as his mom, I was lucky enough to find this information.
And I feel like I did everything that I could to try to set him up as well as I could.
But I don't know.
No, no, absolutely, of course.
And you're always trying to do the best you can do.
What are the foods that mothers, when they're pregnant, need to avoid?
Well, I would say the classic ones.
So alcohol is one.
There was some debate a few years ago around, oh, maybe alcohol is not that bad.
The thing is when you understand how the biology of it all works.
If you drink a glass of wine when you're pregnant and your blood alcohol level goes up, Your baby's blood alcohol level in your uterus also goes up by the same amount.
So when people say oh, a glass of wine is fine during pregnancy, I'm like when your baby's born, would you give him red wine in his bottle.
No, you're doing the same thing.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
And what impact does that have?
Well, we know that very high alcohol levels can lead to proper health conditions, with babies born with a lot of disability.
But the one glass a day, we don't really know.
It seems to be fine, but what's happening in the brain, we're not sure.
In animal studies.
They show that even the equivalent of one glass a day needs the brain forming differently than it should.
So that's one thing.
Another thing to avoid.
I mean cigarettes, all drugs, toxic chemicals, if you can, because again they go into your baby's bloodstream.
What kind of toxic chemicals are the ones we don't think about?
The ones that you had to really clear out?
That's a good question.
I think the big ones is like asbestos, mold, pesticides.
Cleaning products in the house?
So there's no studies on those.
But yeah, probably.
It's a good idea.
I try to clean everything with vinegar.
I either drink it or I clean with it.
Yeah.
That's a good idea.
I also was very careful with plastics.
So I was wearing Invisaligns, you know, the teeth retainers.
And I took them out during pregnancy because I saw some studies that show that there's minuscule amounts of plastic that can be leaching into your body.
So I thought might as well be safe.
But again, this is very early stuff.
So even drinking from a plastic water bottle, for example.
I try to avoid that for myself also because the microplastics you want to avoid heating plastic in the microwave or eating out of a warm or hot plastic container.
Plastic bottles are a big, big one.
So I lose it all the time.
But I buy a nice aluminum water bottle and then I lose it after four days.
I have to buy another one, but I try to drink out of those for sure.
And then the big one we don't think about is like But sugar, that's something that goes directly into your baby's bloodstream, that your baby also has to deal with.
So I did all this work on glucose, right?
Maybe we can go back to that a little bit, because I think the parallels between adults' glucose levels and the baby are interesting.
So...
Glucose is our body's favorite source of energy.
All the cells in our body use it for energy.
So our fingers to move, our hearts to pump, our brains to think, etc.
And we give glucose by eating carbs, which I explained.
Starches like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, or sugars like apple juice and chocolate cake.
We talked about this in our previous episode, but if you give your body too much glucose, you get what's called a glucose spike.
And these are not good.
And these are not good because they increase inflammation and they lead to your body needing to turn that glucose into fat to protect itself from the high glucose levels.
And then after the spike comes the crash.
And lots of glucose spikes over time can lead to many symptoms and consequences.
So when you're pregnant...
Your baby, his bloodstream and your bloodstream are pretty much connected.
There's no filter.
So when you have a glucose spike, your baby inside your uterus also has a glucose spike.
And what's that training the baby's body to do?
Well, it does exactly what you do, meaning it registers inflammation and it also has to deal with the spike.
So it has to crash.
Yeah, and it has to turn the glucose into fat to manage the spike.
So your baby's body, as he's developing, is like, oh, glucose spike.
Okay, I'll take some glucose that I need, but the glucose I don't need, I'm going to store it as fat.
And that's why we see that baby's fat mass at birth is perfectly correlated to the mother's glucose levels.
So the higher your glucose levels during pregnancy, the more fat mass your baby is born with.
The most baby is really cute.
So absolutely, super cute.
But if there's a lot of fat, it's a sign that your baby had to deal with a very high glucose environment when he was in your belly.
Are they taking energy away from other areas of growth by having to process that?
That's a great question.
I don't know if they're taking energy away, but the main thing that's going on is that repeated glucose spikes is increasing inflammation.
So it's setting them up for having an inflammatory body long term.
It's doing a few things.
Yes.
One thing, yes.
Second thing is it's training their body to put on fat.
Like put on fat, put on fat, put on fat so that you know how to store glucose away quickly.
And so in animals we see that high sugar diets during pregnancy means that the babies have these switches activated on the genes for storing fat.
So they are set up, they're calibrated to be really good at storing fat.
And we all have friends who eat the same diet as another friend, but one friend puts on much more weight than the other.
And then the other thing that happens, Jay, has to do with your baby's brain.
And this is an entire incredible universe.
So as I said, all of your neurons are being built during pregnancy.
And so you have the neurons in your brain.
Pew, pew, pew.
Lots of neurons being created.
250,000 neurons per minute during pregnancy.
Okay.
But that's not all.
In your baby's brain, there's also another type of cell.
And these cells are called the microglia.
And they kind of look like starfish.
They're like, hello, microglia.
And they are sort of your baby's rangers.
They're in your baby's brain as he's growing his brain.
And they detect problems.
They say, oh, that neuron is not shaping out as it should.
I'm going to go grab it and destroy it.
That neuron is not connecting very well, or it looks a bit weird.
I'm going to go grab it and destroy it.
So the microglia, the little starfish patrols, are pruning your baby's neurons to eliminate all the damaged ones.
Now the problem is when we have high inflammation levels in a baby's body.
One of the causes can be the high glucose levels.
These microglia, they kind of freak out and they become overactive.
So they start pruning neurons that should not be pruned.
So they're killing healthy neurons.
They're making mistakes.
They're going a bit too far in their role.
So the brain is not being shaped as optimally as it could.
And scientists believe that this is why moms who have gestational diabetes have kids at a 25 higher risk of developing autism.
Wow.
This is an association.
Yeah, it's terrifying.
So it's an association.
And it's actually not just autism, but all psychiatric disorders are more common in babies of moms who have gestational diabetes.
And again, scientists believe it has to do with these overactive microglia in the brain.
I want to be cautious here because it's pretty heavy stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what we're talking about here is an association.
We're not saying gestational diabetes causes autism.
And still the numbers are very low.
For example, you go from 3 in 100 kids having autism in the general population to 4 in 100 kids having autism in moms who've had gestational diabetes.
It's an association.
The numbers are still low.
But the signal is very strong.
This is from studies done on tens of millions of moms.
This association remains.
So listen, it's a very you know, psychiatric disorders very big topic, lots of variables, lots of factors.
But it seems that perhaps high inflammation during pregnancy could be one of many factors that is relevant in this quest to try to understand these disorders.
So again, it's just shocking all the stuff that science knows.
And it's shocking how little parents are told.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, and it's hard because the way I'm listening to him like it feels like so much pressure on the mom, like all of this feels like and you've just been through the process yourself.
It's hard work because you're almost testing your discipline and your willpower at a time when you're trying to co-create a baby, which you've never done before.
If it's your first time doing it, it's your second time.
Sure.
You've had some experience. but it feels like so much and it feels like the stress of it.
And I think we're kind of like this in society.
In the past, we didn't have information.
Today we have information and sometimes more information creates more stress.
And then we all get to this place where we're like oh, I'm just going to do what I can, because I can't handle this.
But this has real, as you say in this book, these nine months count forever.
This has a lifetime impact.
So in one sense, we can't be as Okay, I'll do my best because we know what it takes.
How do you encourage moms to think about the stress component of this, which I'm sure you had to navigate yourself?
Yeah, I think the first thing we need to understand, this is not the mom's fault.
100%?
100%.
Society has, excuse my language, f***ed up.
The food that is available today, the food that is cheap, the food that's at the grocery store, the food that they serve you even at the hospital, is bad for us.
And it's leading to all sorts of stuff, from heart disease to diabetes.
I mean, we're all sick because of our food system.
And it's also failing pregnant moms, like it's failing everybody else.
And so just like with everything else, we have to say, shit, we are in a bad situation.
Food around us is not helping us.
What can I do?
What are small things I can do to try to put the odds back in my favor?
And just like with my glucose hacks, I teach people how to, you know, reverse diabetes, for example.
Here I'm like, okay, ladies, we're in a bad situation.
Society is not helping us.
Here are simple things that we can do to help us navigate this food landscape during pregnancy.
And Jay, it is a lot of pressure.
Like you're building a human and I'm never going to be able to take that pressure away.
I felt it too.
But I'm hoping that with this book, I'm going to lead moms away from like the overwhelming Instagram information and that barrage of like stuff and be like.
These are four things that, if you do them, you're going to have an outsized positive effect on your baby's development and long-term health.
It's just four things.
Yeah.
It's stressful.
It's so stressful to be pregnant because, no matter what you do and even now that I have my baby who's born I feel like, no matter what I do, I could have done it better.
I'm going to feel guilty of this, guilty of that.
It's tough.
It's tough.
But if we go back to science and we go back to simple stuff that has a big impact, I truly believe we can navigate that pressure with a bit more ease and serenity.
And I appreciate you saying it's not the woman's fault because Biologically, Jay babies are developing in female bodies.
And that's just biology.
But everybody is responsible for the society we live in.
We're not going to hold moms responsible for the food at the grocery store.
You see what I mean?
So it's just like, this is a biological thing, and society as a whole is failing.
Governments need to be reading this.
Right.
We need to be teaching this in medical school.
Doctors need to be talking about this.
For example, choline, that 90% of moms are not getting enough in the United States.
Only 6% of healthcare practitioners talk about choline to pregnant moms.
The surveys show this.
So the system is broken.
And it's so not the mom's fault.
It's a systematic issue and we need to find a way out of it.
Yeah, it's like your doctor's not telling you, you go to the grocery store, it's not available.
Obviously, you don't know that from your parents.
You're left in a really, really difficult position.
I know.
I mean, is there also a connection between and I'm asking because I genuinely don't know is there a connection between diet and miscarriage?
So for a few core things, so folic acid is one.
So that's why doctors will always tell you to take a folic acid supplement.
Because if you have very low levels, then miscarriage is more likely.
But choline is also associated with miscarriage when it's too low.
And that's something people don't talk about.
And listen.
I was eating choline, I was taking my folic acid supplement and I still had a miscarriage.
So you can do your best, but some things are completely out of your control, for sure, for sure.
And the flip side of that is that even if you do nothing that's in this book even if you've had kids before, they're probably going to be okay.
We're talking about small optimizations.
We're talking about, as you saw, like 3% to 4%, small stuff.
I'm fine.
You're fine.
Our moms didn't eat any choline, omega-3s, a lot of sugar.
We're okay.
Humans are resilient.
But if we know this, we need to tell people about it.
Yeah, and I think it's also...
As you grow older, you actually start to realize how much all these things matter more when it comes to long-term health.
Like the vulnerability you mean?
Yeah, like mental health.
Like you don't realize this in your 20s or when your kid's a teenager, when you know your body's doing all the best work.
But when you hit your 40s and your 50s and people go on, that's when you start to notice oh, I've had inflammation in my body for years.
People with mental health conditions that are based on that.
When you look at all the impacts, like I appreciate what you're saying that humans are resilient and will survive.
But the reality also is that you start to see the vulnerabilities and the cracks in the body and the mind as we get older that you don't appreciate when your kid's young and everything generally hopefully feels healthy and touchy.
I really appreciate you sharing your own experience, because I'd say pretty much like 75 of my friends who've tried to conceive in the last 24 months have experienced at least one miscarriage, if not more.
And I feel like it's an area that isn't talked about enough.
It isn't shared enough unless you really are really close friends with quite a lot of people.
And there seems to be at least some pain, and maybe there's even guilt and shame attached to it for many mothers that I've spoken to.
Talk to me about the fact that you thought you were doing everything right and then you go through that.
What is that experience like?
So I'll take you back to the beginning.
So I'll tell you the whole story.
So my husband and I decided to try to have a baby.
This was two years ago or something.
And I got pregnant really quickly in two months.
And I had no cares in the world.
I was just very nauseous, but I thought everything would be fine.
So we go to the first ultrasound and they find a heartbeat.
I'm like, oh my God, great.
My baby's going to be born in December.
How wonderful.
Oh man, we've got to move now.
You get into the process.
I go back at the three-month mark for the next ultrasound to check everything's fine.
And I get to the doctor's office and I lay down and they put this gel on your belly and then they put this weird wand thing to see inside your belly.
And there was a screen in front of me that showed me the image in real time of what he was seeing.
So he put the thing on my belly, turned the machine on the image popped up on the screen and I just knew instantly that there was a big problem.
And the embryo on the image had not grown.
And it was.
This is kind of a crude image, but it was sort of laying at the bottom of my uterus, a little bit like you would see a dead fish at the bottom of an aquarium.
Like I could see that it was lifeless.
And just...
And the ground was ripped out of under my feet.
You know, I was like, oh my God, the embryo is dead.
I had experienced what's called a silent miscarriage.
Silent being the key word here, meaning I had no symptoms.
Most people, when they have a miscarriage, they start bleeding.
They have cramps and the body expulses the embryo.
I had no symptoms.
I had been walking around for a month with a dead embryo because they can see when it stopped developing.
And I had no clue.
No idea.
It was so freaking painful.
So I needed to have a surgery where they take the embryo out, which was terrible.
And it brought back all this trauma of my back.
Surgery was just so bad.
And then I just spiraled.
And I think I saw you like two weeks after.
And I was like, Jay, I'm really not okay.
And I felt like if emotions could kill me, I'd be dead.
That's the intensity I was feeling.
Because it's not just like you lost the pregnancies.
You lost the entire narrative.
You lost the life that you had projected and planned.
All of a sudden, oh, in December, I'm not going to have a baby.
It's so rough.
And I was so scared.
Am I going to be able to get pregnant again?
Is this going to happen again?
All of a sudden, all my friends were pregnant around me and they were fine.
You know, it's just like all of a sudden everybody was pregnant on Instagram.
I felt so, so, so sad.
And I felt so angry.
And I didn't understand why it had happened to me.
I was like, why me?
And then I started talking to my friends and family.
I found out that my mom had had miscarriages and she had never told me.
My stepmom, my grandmother, my closest friend, all of a sudden the tongues untied.
But because I didn't know about these stories beforehand, I was not prepared.
I had no clue that this could happen to me.
Therefore, I fell from so, so high.
I even told people I was pregnant the day I got the positive pregnancy test.
Usually you wait until three months because that's when you know it's probably going to be okay.
I was like, oh my God, pregnancy test, positive.
I called up everybody, oh my God, we're having a baby.
I had no conception.
And I'm somebody, I consider myself pretty well informed, but yet I was so lost.
And then the grief was so deep and so painful.
But yet at the same time, I wanted to try getting pregnant again.
And I was asking myself do I have to have fully grieved this pregnancy before I allow myself to have another pregnancy?
And then I realized that that grief was always going to be there and coexist.
I was never going to be able to completely say goodbye to it.
So we tried again.
I got pregnant again and then followed the most stressful nine months of my life, because every day I thought maybe there's a problem and I don't know.
You wake up with that feeling.
It's the worst.
Because for the first four or five months, you don't feel the baby.
So I was just spiraling.
I went to the doctor so many times.
I was so embarrassed.
I wanted so many ultrasounds that I started seeing two different doctors and they didn't know about each other because I felt so embarrassed of how much I wanted to get.
I got like 10 ultrasounds in the first three months, four months, 10.
Usually you get like two.
So anyway, it was terrible and it was really, really, really painful.
And then when my son was born, I felt like I wasn't anxious anymore.
Yeah.
Because I was like, okay, he's here, he's alive, he's okay.
But it was an awful experience.
And I wish that more people had told me about their own miscarriages, so that I felt a bit less alone.
I would go on Google and be like, celebrities who have had miscarriages.
And I saw, oh, Beyonce had a miscarriage.
Okay, I feel less alone now.
That's how much I wanted connection.
That's how lost I felt.
Yeah.
Gabrielle Unions talked about it at length, her experiences of multiple and just yeah, it's gosh, I mean it's.
You know, it's one of those things that like it doesn't matter how, even how common it is.
It's like the loss and the grieving and the experience of it is so heavy.
And few people know how to hold space for it.
Talk to me about that.
You're grieving.
You're properly grieving.
And I think it's one of the only griefs that people don't know how to manage.
Usually when grief comes up in life, we kind of know what to do.
We check in with the person and we say, you're okay.
Do you want me to come over?
With miscarriage grief, it feels different because it's invisible.
Nobody physical died.
And so I got a range of responses from people saying, oh, it's just nature doing its thing.
Don't worry.
To people saying like, okay, we'll just move on and, you know, it'll work next time.
It was like, you don't understand.
It's not about that.
And then there were amazing people who also just knew to just hold it.
But it makes a lot of us very uncomfortable because we don't know how to handle it.
And all I really wanted was just people to say, I'm so sorry.
This must be so hard.
Yeah, of course.
Can I bring you a chocolate cake?
That's all I wanted.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's just like any emotion.
You want it to be held better, but we're not educated.
I mean you do great work to help people know how to deal with emotion and hold it, but yeah, it's rough.
Yeah, it's shocking to me that people even still think they can say things like, oh, let's move on.
And I get it.
It's coming from a good... They want to be positive.
Totally.
It's coming from a good place.
But it's like I think we're so far past the thinking that positive outpaces like a difficult emotion and that you can't just put a band-aid on it and be happy about it.
And also just...
I love what you said.
It's giving people space to tell you how they feel and what's going on and that it is hard.
And if they say it isn't, then that's okay too.
But it's letting people tell you their story.
That's all you can do.
You're not going to solve it or fix it.
And I think that's where it comes from.
It's like, we want to fix it.
We want to solve it because it's almost uncomfortable for us to sit there with them.
And I really am happy that you shared it because...
I'm hoping that a lot more people who listen to this will also look to you and go wow, like Jessie was doing everything right.
And still this experience happened.
That's the thing.
I was doing everything that I knew of.
I was taking the supplements.
I was eating the eggs.
I was doing all this stuff.
I wasn't doing any of the harmful things we know could impact a baby.
I was not bungee jumping.
I was not drinking vodka, you know.
Is there any research to suggest what causes the miscarriages?
Does anything exist?
Yeah.
So you kind of see these pie charts that show you the percentage likelihood.
So maybe it's a nutritional deficiency like folate or choline.
Maybe it's a chromosomal abnormality, meaning that the chromosomes in the sperm and the egg were slightly messed up.
And as you age, your eggs and your sperm have more abnormalities, which is why miscarriage is more common as you advance in age.
So maybe my egg had a chromosome that was missing or a problem.
Maybe my husband's sperm had a problem in his chromosomes.
We don't know.
But in a way, it's quote unquote good because miscarriage means that embryo was probably not viable.
Other reasons could be your placenta, which is the organ that helps grow the baby.
Maybe there was an issue there.
Maybe your body was not able to hold on to the pregnancy.
And it's probably a lot of stuff that we don't even know about.
But in most cases, you can't control it.
And so that's why it's stressful.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I can't imagine it.
You have to hold it lightly, you know?
Yeah.
And my therapist said something amazing.
So when I was pregnant with my son so my second pregnancy and I was like four months in and I was still super stressed.
I was like, well, what if I miscarry?
What if I lose him?
And she was like, you don't know how long you're going to have this baby.
But for as long as you have him, you can choose to love him.
Because I was even...
Keeping myself from love and from joy during my second pregnancy until like the fifth month mark, because I was so anxious.
I didn't want to reopen my heart.
Yeah.
Because I was so scared.
That's real.
And after she said that, I was like, okay, you know what?
Yes, I can allow myself to love.
And love is vulnerable.
But I'm glad I did.
But it was hard.
Yeah, it was very hard.
And we waited six months to tell our friends and family.
That's how stressed we were.
Six months.
It's real.
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It's like one thing is going through a health problem on your own, and then it's a whole other thing when you're taking care of someone else.
Yeah, I've seen my friends go through it and thankfully a lot of them have also had babies on their second or third time around.
But yeah, I've seen it just how hard it is for the couple too.
Like we've been talking about the loss of.
You know the grieving that you're going through of the loss of the baby or the life you were going to have, but even how it affects the husband and wife or the boyfriend girlfriend partners, whatever it may be, just that's heavy too.
Totally.
And it's not easy.
Another thing you raise as challenges for moms in their nine months is fatigue, and you know we've been talking about stress somewhat and that's how we went off in this direction.
But that fatigue that you get by being pregnant and that naturally wants you to have sugar and that naturally wants you to have carbs and fat, like all the stuff that we're trying so like, what do you do when you're tired?
Well, I totally get it.
I was there too.
And what's interesting about the sugar is that you think it's giving you energy.
It's actually not.
It's giving you dopamine.
Dopamine is the pleasure molecule in your brain.
So you feel kind of awake, like, whoa, I'm awake.
You think it's energy.
It's not.
But it's okay because sugar helps us feel better.
And I totally am there.
I was there too.
So what I did is I always made sure... to not have sugar on an empty stomach.
Why?
Because this is going to create a big spike and a big drop and more fatigue.
And it's going to create a big spike that's also going to go into my baby's bloodstream.
So always sugar after a meal, never for breakfast, for example.
And if I felt, sometimes I felt really, really hungry, like I was just like well, I need to eat so much today.
And that was probably my body telling me you need more food.
So I would eat spaghetti.
I would eat all the carbs I wanted.
But again, I would do that in certain ways.
So, for example, I would always have the carbs after a veggie starter built around vegetables, because the fiber in the veggies creates this protection in your intestine and And it slows down how quickly glucose arrives into your bloodstream.
Wow.
So I was like I'm going to eat the carbs that I'm craving, but with the hacks, so that I reduce spikes and inflammation in my body and in my baby's body.
And all this is in the chapter in Nine Months That Count Forever about blood sugar and glucose.
And you can use all of the hacks. around my glucose work except one, which is vinegar.
So if you want to do the vinegar hack during pregnancy, you have to make sure that it's pasteurized, because you want to make sure that it's safe to consume for you and your baby.
And the hack is the following.
You take one tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water before you eat carbs, and this can reduce the glucose spike by up to 30%.
Yes, this is your magic formula.
And the thing is here what it does.
It just slows down how quickly glucose arrives in your bloodstream because it slows down the digestion of the carbs.
So it's not erasing the carbs.
It's fine to have carbs.
And as I mentioned, your baby needs more carbs as pregnancy progresses, but it's helping them arrive more carbs. calmly in your bloodstream, like not so brutally.
And that's the whole point.
We want to have the carbs we love with less spike, so less inflammation and less drop, so less fatigue and more cravings.
It's all about like working with the cravings, you know?
Any other hacks that we have to know that women listening need to know?
Well, if you feel like moving, even just going for a quick walk can be super helpful.
Not only does it help with your blood sugar levels, I still walk for 10 minutes after eating dinner every night.
Nice!
That's amazing.
But during pregnancy, exercise seems to be doing something incredible.
So this is one of my favorite studies that I discovered about pregnancy.
So scientists took two groups of rats.
Both groups were pregnant and they put them in the same houses.
Same diet, same lighting, everything.
The only difference was...
One group of rats had these tiny little treadmills and they had to walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes a day, every day, during their pregnancy.
The other group did not do any exercise.
That was the only difference.
Then the babies were born and the scientists put the babies in these mazes and they measured the baby's anxiety levels.
They found that the babies from the moms who exercised solved the mazes twice as fast and Wow.
And had 80% fewer anxiety symptoms.
No way.
The only difference was the physical activity during pregnancy.
That's crazy.
So, even if you just walk, it's going to help your glucose levels and going to help probably, your baby's brain development.
Those 10,000 steps.
I mean, listen, when you're pregnant, one step feels like 10,000 steps.
So what's realistic?
Do what you can.
Do what you can.
I loved walking.
Personally, I went and weightlifted at the gym until like my eight and a half month of pregnancy.
And it was very hard, but it felt good after I was done.
That's the only thing I could do all day.
I was like, okay, I'm going to the gym today.
And I would just muster up all my courage with my big belly.
And I was living in Montmartre in Paris, which is very on top of this hill.
And I was living in this apartment, which was a fifth-story walk-up.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
So I moved when I was eight months.
But before that, I just naturally was in a situation where I had to walk all the time.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
So do what you can, even if you can't move.
One of my favorite hacks is the calf raise hack.
So you put your feet on the ground like this and you do some calf raises.
So you do like pushups with your shins, with your calves.
This is very powerful at reducing a glucose spike after a meal and also counts as exercise.
To solve it twice as quick and have that much less anxiety, that's huge.
And listen, this isn't rats.
Do we know if it's happening in humans?
We don't know.
We just know that exercise is very good during pregnancy.
And babies of moms who exercise tend to have better emotional regulation.
But we haven't done a study being like okay, two groups of moms, same house, same diet, same lighting, one treadmill.
We can't do that.
But animal studies are really, really helpful.
What do pregnant moms do if they're experiencing a lot of bloating?
Mmm, that's a very good question.
I think some of the bloating is hormonal, especially in the first trimester.
And then probably similar stuff as you would do the rest of the time.
So counterintuitively, you actually want to have more fiber.
Sometimes if you increase fiber very quickly, it's going to lead to a lot of bloating.
So you want to make sure you're doing that slowly.
And then honestly, sugars is a big one.
If you reduce your sugar intake, generally bloating goes down.
And sometimes you have food sensitivities that can increase bloating also.
But that's a big topic.
Yeah.
One thing we haven't talked about before we get into a game we made for you.
A game?
Yeah.
One thing we haven't talked about is how does the man's diet affect his sperm and affect you know?
We touched on it briefly when we were talking about miscarriages, but like, How important is that?
How valuable is that?
So the man's diet before conception is going to set up his sperm quality.
For sure, we know that.
The problem is, from the moment conception happens...
The entire responsibility of the diet is in the female body.
Yeah, of course.
For example, so women have these eggs, right?
And the sperm meets the egg.
The sperm only brings DNA.
He's not bringing anything else.
The egg is 10,000 times bigger than the sperm because it contains DNA and also food.
So the mom's diet is more important to the development than the dad's diet.
The dad's diet is important preconceptions.
For example...
My husband, three months before trying to get pregnant both times, he cut out all alcohol.
He was exercising a lot.
He was really careful with his sugar.
He did all of that.
And then he kind of threw me the ball and I was in charge.
But it is helpful for the dad to have a healthy lifestyle, especially preconception.
Yeah.
It's just, I feel like none of this is ever talked about.
Like we almost like just have kids without thinking about it.
And listen, it works, right?
Like it works.
But if in a world where we have all these incredible scientific studies, we need to know about them.
It works.
But I also think we're noticing long-term the ramifications.
That's the thing.
Let me make you a little list of my problems.
So I have an unhealthy obsession with cats.
I don't think that's a problem.
You know, I have existential crises all the time.
Lots of mental health issues depersonalization dissociation anxiety depression, cusp of prediabetes when I was 25, like I was two points away from prediabetes.
Problems with emotional regulation, like emotions can really overwhelm me.
I am really bad at running fast.
I mean, the list goes on, okay?
Some of these things, maybe they're genetic.
Some of these things, maybe they have to do with my mom's diet in the room.
Maybe they have to do with my child experiences, like who knows?
But for sure, the nine months of pregnancy calibrate things.
They're a window of outsized influence.
Yeah.
And so today, after knowing about all the sides, I'm certain that my mom's diet, if it had been slightly more higher in choline omega-3s, protein and lower in sugar, I'm sure that I would feel different today.
Yeah.
And those are all doable.
They're practical.
Exactly.
They make sense.
Exactly.
And add on the couple of hacks that you just mentioned.
So what's wrong with you now?
Let's make a list.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm like, I've got plenty as well.
I've got plenty of good stuff too.
So I'm trying to think about like, what my mom would have done right with like, And then, of course, there's so much nurture, but there is.
What is fascinating is when I talk to my friends who have kids of course I'm only talking to people, I don't have kids.
When I talk to my friends who have kids, they're like, oh my God, that kid came out completely different to the other one.
Like kids have personalities, kids have their own way of being, they have their own aura and life.
And so there is so much that's being affected by how they're created, because all babies don't just come out all the same as well.
Absolutely.
And then depending on your diet, you will program your kids differently.
If you have a different diet during two pregnancies, your baby's epigenetics will be different.
And then, of course, you have whatever you want to call the soul or what it is.
And then you have how you grow up.
You have your experiences.
They shape you.
Everything is important.
What's a study that hasn't been done? that you'd wish we could do to understand pregnancy better?
It would be very unethical.
If we really wanted to measure the impact, we would recruit 1000 women and half of them we would say eat what you normally were going to eat, don't worry about it.
And the other half.
We would make sure that they're getting all the nutrients I talk about in this book.
And we would supplement them and give them all the choline, all the protein, all the omega-3s.
We would make sure they're below the WHO recommendation for sugar.
And then the babies come out and we would follow them for 30 40, 50 years and we would see what happened.
Actually, while this is impossible, something happened in the UK that was kind of close.
Do you know about this?
No, no idea.
So from 1940 to 1953 in the UK there was a sugar ration, meaning the government reduced the amount of sugar that everybody could eat on a daily basis.
People had a ration, an allowance.
Everybody had 40 grams of sugar allowed per day.
This was during the war and it was a way to manage resources.
So everybody got 10 sugar cubes a day.
That's it.
Moms, grandparents, pregnant moms, everybody 40 grams of sugar per day.
This lasted 13 years.
Then all of a sudden, the ration was lifted.
People went back to eating what they usually ate, which meant 80 grams of sugar per day.
So all of a sudden, everybody in the UK went from 40 grams to 80 grams of sugar per day.
And scientists in the early 2000s were like This is really interesting because this means that we have babies who are developing when pregnant moms ate 40 grams of sugar.
And then just after, we have babies developing, when moms were eating 80 grams of sugar during pregnancy.
And the scientists wondered if they could see any differences in the baby's health, because the only thing that had changed was the amount of sugar.
So they called up, well, they found the medical records and they called 60,000 people.
And they saw that the babies who were developing when sugar was lower had a 15 lower likelihood of having developed type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.
Wow.
Compared to their peers who were developing and born after the sugar ration, who had a higher likelihood of diabetes.
So what does this mean?
It means that reducing our sugar intake during pregnancy is associated with lifelong benefit less vulnerability to diabetes lifelong in your baby for their entire life.
And the only change was the number of sugar cubes per day.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah, yeah.
Even 5 grams, 10 grams, one sugar.
Instead of having an orange juice, I'm going to have a whole orange.
That's 20 grams of sugar gone.
Just these small tweaks can have an outsized impact on your baby's vulnerability to disease.
Yeah, that's unbelievable.
I mean, that's so useful.
So useful.
So useful to be able to pull on that.
You've done so much, honestly, to help us understand sugar better.
And even in pregnancy, I feel like that's such a big, important marker.
Jessie, we came up with a this or that game for you.
Pregnancy edition.
Okay, I love it.
This was inspired by your book, Nine Months That Count Forever.
And so it's dedicated to you and your book.
So Jessie, this or that?
Because you did the final five last time.
So question number one, carbs first or protein first when you're nauseous?
Oh, protein first.
Protein all the time.
It will help a lot.
Okay.
Small frequent snacks or fewer more balanced meals?
If you're very nauseous, the small frequent ones really, really helps.
I was eating an almond every five minutes, basically.
But ideally, it's always going to be better to have bigger meals.
But also, as you get more pregnant, as pregnancy progresses, your stomach gets smaller.
So because your uterus is pushing on it, so you have to eat smaller meals.
So it's not a huge deal.
Just make sure that you're eating the right stuff, like the protein and the fish and the eggs.
Very useful.
Good advice.
All right.
Morning sickness the entire pregnancy or intense cravings?
Like, would I prefer?
Yeah.
Cravings.
Pushing through nausea to eat for nutrients or meeting your body where it is.
Oh, come on.
That's easy.
Meeting your body where it is.
We're just checking.
You know, we're like trying to help everyone out.
Following strict pregnancy food rules or reducing stress around food?
Reducing stress around food and knowing that by doing these four key things, you're helping your baby a lot.
More rest or gentle daily movement?
Both, if you can.
Strength training or cardio during pregnancy?
Ooh, great question.
Whatever you do, whatever you can do.
Okay.
Yeah, both are great.
So do the one that you can do.
And you said you were doing weight training.
That was what you were doing, yeah.
Eating within an hour of waking or waiting until appetite kicks in depends on the nausea.
Okay, if you're very nauseous you gotta eat immediately.
Otherwise, listen to your body's cues for sure.
I can't believe there's no solve to the nausea.
I know man, I can't believe that there's not a lot of budget in women's health.
You know, come on guys, gotta invest in here.
Gotta figure that out.
That sounds so uncomfortable cold foods or warm foods when nausea hits?
I never thought about that.
Whatever you can stomach.
There's no science on that, no.
Got it.
Energy peaks at 3 a.m. or fatigue peaks at 3 p.m.?
Oh, man.
If I had to choose one, I think fatigue at 3 pm if I don't have to work, so I could have a little nap.
I started napping when I was pregnant.
That was a new thing.
Nice.
Feel like a human calculator for carbs all day or completely forget nutrition exists.
Oh my God.
Well, if I completely forgot that nutrition existed, no, I could not do that.
I also don't want to be a calculator and be upset.
Okay, pass.
Joker.
Okay, two more.
Prioritize stable glucose in the first trimester, when nausea hits, or the third trimester, when energy drops.
Third trimester.
I think in terms of the baby's brain development, it's at its peak in the third trimester.
The first trimester is also important.
Organs are developing, etc.
Talk to me about that.
Talk to me about what's happening in the first three months, the second three months and the third three months.
So the main difference is that in the first trimester your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream are not yet connected.
So your baby is relying on this kind of milk that your uterus produces for energy and nutrients.
In the second trimester, the placenta comes into play and connects your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream.
At that point it's like a symbiosis is established and your blood and your baby's blood are exchanging nutrients and waste at all times.
So from that point on, you're more connected.
Now, yes, first trimester is important.
Lots of stuff is happening.
But truly, if you look at nutrients, and especially in terms of the amount of nutrients you're going to need how much choline, how much protein, how much omega-3s it's the second and third trimester that are really key to make sure you're getting enough.
Mm-hmm.
And it's also the second and third trimester where usually you're not nauseous.
So it's easier to make the right choices.
Amazing.
Very cool.
Great advice.
All right, last one.
What's worse, skipping meals or eating sugar without protein?
Oh my God, what's worse?
I don't think skipping meals is bad if you're not hungry.
Okay.
If you're not hungry, you don't have to force yourself, but this goes for everybody.
If you do skip a meal though, make sure that the next time you eat, you're eating protein, fat or fiber first, because your stomach is going to be very empty.
So very sensitive.
So I would say, worse is eating sugar without protein, but also, if you have sugar without protein, it's also fine.
These are hard.
These were hard.
These are hard.
Honestly though Jessie, I want to say that you know you're writing this book Nine Months That Count Forever.
How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future.
When I first.
I think when you first sent me the cover through or you first told me about the name, I'd never thought about it like that.
And it sounds so ridiculous to say that, but I never really realized.
I was like, yeah, it is nine months that counts forever.
And I was like wow, like that sentence in and of itself is just so powerful and so emphatic.
Because you don't think about it like that.
You think you have the kid's whole life to do stuff and you do but these nine months are having such a big impact.
The fact that you've been able to simplify it, as always, in the best way that only you know how to do, to four core things that we can all work on and think about.
I'm so grateful to you, truly.
I know that I'm going to recommend this to every single one of my friends who is trying to have a baby, thinking about having a baby.
Don't worry, I won't give it to friends who are not thinking about it.
But genuinely, I think it's incredible to have a guide that is so dedicated to this very specific challenge that, like you said, it's no one's fault and no one is responsible for, apart from the food systems, governments and everyone around of us.
So thank you for doing the hard work.
I really mean that.
I really mean that.
It's very rare that you have a book that you're like oh, I know exactly when to give this to someone.
And everyone who's listening and watching.
I hope this is the book that you're buying for friends, family members nieces nephews cousins, you know, whoever it may be because yeah, it's going to change every child's life.
So thank you so much.
Thank you, Jay, for inviting me back.
I love our conversation.
Me too.
It's great to have you back.
You're the best.
Thanks, Jessie.
If you enjoyed this podcast, you're going to love my conversation with Michelle Obama, where she opens up on how to stay with your partner when they're changing.
If you're going through something right now with your partner, this is the episode for you.
The world won't always like you, but you can't count on the world to like you.
A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new.
It invites us back home to ourselves.
I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal.
This year we're talking honestly about mental health relationships and the patterns we're ready to release.
If you're looking for clarity, connection and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you.
Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroche on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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