Taking precautions during pregnancy may help ensure a child doesn’t develop asthma, research shows.
Asthma is a disease that can impact many different aspects of life. As an expectant parent, it’s only natural to want to protect one’s yet-to-be-born baby from as many of the dangers and harms that the world presents as possible and prevent any health complications. Asthma is one of those conditions that a parent would like to help your child avoid, if possible, and now research shows it may be possible to significantly reduce the chances of developing the condition by preventing it during pregnancy.
People can develop asthma at various ages throughout life. There are different risk factors that can play into the likelihood of someone developing asthma, and those risk factors can come into play before a child is even born. So, obviously, the risk factors that can be controlled should be managed during pregnancy, so the new child is exposed to as little risk as possible.
One of the key risk factors, in this case, is simply having a mother with asthma. When the mother has asthma, the child is more likely to develop the same condition. Of course, this is not something that a mother can prevent, but the asthma of the mother can be monitored and managed along the way so as to reduce the chances of secondary health problems occurring in the fetus.
Other prenatal risk factors include premature birth and smoking. If a mother smokes during pregnancy, the risk of asthma in the child goes up significantly. Also, a mother who is exposed to second-hand smoke regularly during pregnancy would likewise put the baby at a greater risk of asthma after birth. Other controllable elements that might play a role here include maternal obesity, stress, and more.
A study performed in Australia has demonstrated that controlling a mother’s asthma through the use of a corticosteroid during pregnancy has a notable impact on whether her baby will wind up with asthma. Not only does the corticosteroid protect the mother and help her maintain health throughout the pregnancy, but it also offers a protective benefit to the child as well. Leaving asthma unchecked and untreated during pregnancy would be exposing the child to an additional risk unnecessarily, as it has been shown that treatment makes a statistically significant difference in the likely outcomes for kids.
No matter what area of health is studied, it seems that the connection between a mother and her baby only grows stronger with the more we learn about biology and human development. The health of the mother has a deeply profound impact on the health of the child, and those months that are spent in the womb are sure to have a lifelong impact on how that child grows into an adult.
For expectant mothers, the wait to reach their due date can seem like a long one, and it can be difficult to follow all of the guidelines and best practices for keeping the baby safe and prevent complications. When viewed from the perspective of the impact that those choices will have on the child for the rest of his or her life, however, it becomes far easier to make those sacrifices.
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