Baby, Brain, Stress, and Consequences

So I just absolutely love studying the brain and I just learned something super cool related to pregnancy and stress.

The hypothalamus is a part of your brain responsible for body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleep, and circadian cycles.  It also detects stressful situations or when you are stressed.  Once stress is detected, it releases a hormone called CRF that starts a series of processes, the end of which results in the creation of cortisol which is the main stress hormone.  Cortisol travels through the blood and when it gets back to the hypothalamus, it binds to it and tells it to stop producing CRF.

The cortisol that flows through the mom's blood, affects her baby's blood hormone levels in utero.  The baby's brain is still developing and the large amounts of cortisol tells the baby's brain DNA to do something different.  Essentially, the baby's brain will change to produce fewer receptors for cortisol.  This decreases the feedback response, which is when cortisol tells the hypothalamus to stop producing CRF, so that the hypothalamus will continue to produce CRF which will also perpetuate the production of cortisol.  Ultimately, this results in much higher levels of cortisol throughout the child's life.  Higher levels of cortisol and stress make the child more prone to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder or personality disorders as adults.

So what does this mean??  If you are pregnant, you've GOT to keep your stress levels down because your stress with genetically alter your baby's brain and the likelihood of psychological disorders as adults will increase.  A child's stressful youth will do the same so it's important to help relieve your child's stress once they are born as well.