The neurological development of children can be improved by modifying the diet and applying stress reduction programs for their mothers while they are pregnant. This is clear from the results of a randomized clinical trial carried out by researchers from BCNatal that shows that following a Mediterranean diet or a mindfulness program during pregnancy significantly improves child neurodevelopment at two years of age.
The study, which has been published today in the Jama Network magazine, follows up on the clinical trial called IMPACT Barcelona -in which more than 1,200 pregnant women at high risk of having a low-weight baby participated for three years- now evaluating neurodevelopment of children at 24 months of life.
In their day, the participants were randomly divided into three groups: one that made visits to a nutritionist to follow a Mediterranean diet, another that followed a mindfulness program to reduce stress and a third control group to which the follow-up was applied. usual pregnancy.
At the time of delivery, the researchers already found a decrease of between 29% and 36% of babies born with low birth weight in the case of mothers who had followed the Mediterranean diet or the mindfulness program.
And when evaluating the neurological development of these children at 24 months with the standardized Bayley-III scales (which allow measuring the mental, psychomotor and behavioral development of babies between 1 and 42 months), they found that those whose mothers followed the Mediterranean diet presented higher scores in the cognitive and socio-emotional domain than children of mothers with conventional pregnancy follow-up, while children of mothers who underwent a mindfulness intervention scored higher in the socio-emotional domain.
Other epidemiological studies had already suggested the association between maternal diet and the neurodevelopment of children and how certain dietary components can mediate the inflammatory state and interfere with brain development in utero. There are also studies that have linked stress and anxiety in pregnant women with worse neurological development.
But, the BCNatal researchers emphasize in the article published in Jama, “to the best of our knowledge, this is the first randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effects of lifestyle interventions based on the Mediterranean diet or stress reduction on the child neurodevelopment.
And they emphasize that other studies confirm that the results of the cognitive domain in early childhood are associated with the future intelligence quotient, “which gives clinical importance” to their findings and to medical intervention to promote changes in the lifestyle of pregnant women.
In the Impact Barcelona study, the dietary intervention was based on the methods used in the Predimed study and consisted of the pregnant women seeing a nutritionist monthly to change their diet pattern, incorporate more fruit and vegetables, white meat, oily fish, dairy and whole grains.
In addition, they were provided with free products rich in omega-3, such as extra virgin olive oil and walnuts, and their adherence to the diet was evaluated by measuring biomarkers in blood and urine related to the intake of these two products, as explained in the researcher Francesca Crovetto, first author of the study, and Eduard Gratacós, director of BCNatal and another of the research coordinators.
Regarding the intervention aimed at reducing stress in pregnant women, it was based on the MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) program developed by Boston University and adapted to pregnancy by the researchers themselves. Specifically, the women followed a mindfulness program for eight weeks and completed questionnaires and had their levels of stress-related hormones (cortisol and cortisone) measured at the start and end of the program.
The director of BCNatal (Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu BArcelona) already pointed out when presenting the first results of this trial, at the end of 2021, that the verification of the benefits that these interventions entail open the door to introducing changes in current pregnancy monitoring and control protocols because they show that changing the pregnant woman’s lifestyle can reduce pregnancy complications and improve the health and development of the baby without the need to resort to pharmacological or any other type of treatment.
