Nathan Beaumont from The Dominion Post reports on the 820k grant given to an Otago university physiology professor to study pregnancy cravings.
Dr Colin Brown aims to work out why four out of 10 New Zealand women gain excessive weight during pregnancy.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“”Not only do women want to eat more, they want to eat some bizarre stuff like pickle and icecream.
“”If you eat too much, you will put on weight. But there is something so complex going on in the brain underpinning that simple idea. Even though we are aware of it, some people just can’t control it and that’s what we will look at.”
“Dr Brown said two hormones involved in pregnancy – oxytocin and prolactin – were believed to act as “off” and “on” appetite switches.
“Understanding how the hormones interacted could help discover which mothers were likely to be at greatest risk.
“Excessive weight gain not only put their health in danger, but there was also a greater risk of birth complications, [Dr Brown] said.”