According to a new study, babies whose mothers participated in a mindfulness-based program during pregnancy had healthier stress responses at 6 months of age. The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
“It’s really well established that maternal stress in pregnancy increases the risk of health problems in babies,” said Norona-Zhou, PhD, a clinical psychologist affiliated with UCSF’s Center for Health and Community.
“But we don’t have a good understanding of how this process unfolds and its underlying biological mechanisms, or whether we can buffer the effects of stress on negative health outcomes,” she said.
Researchers studied 135 mother-child colors from low-income, racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds who were experiencing high stress in their lives. Babies whose mothers participated in an eight-week mindfulness-based program had a faster heart recovery from stressful interactions, as well as more self-soothing behaviors, than those who did not.
“The ability to “bounce back” from stress is associated with better health outcomes later in life,” said study senior author Nikki Bush, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “There has been little research on what we can do in the positive lane; It’s mostly about showing the negative effects of prenatal stress,” Bush said.
“This is the next frontier – interventions for mothers that have a positive impact on both mother and child,” she said. Studies from 2019 show that similar mindfulness interventions reduced stress and depression in mothers, as well as improved their glucose tolerance and physical activity levels. To gauge the infants’ stress response, mothers were trained in a “still facial paradigm,” whereby mothers played with their babies for two minutes, then performed a completely neutral facial expression for two minutes. And ignored the speeches of the children. for attention.
He repeated the play-ignore cycle and finished with two minutes of play. Using electrodes, the researchers collected measurements of the infants’ autonomic nervous system activity — fight-or-flight and rest-and-digestive responses — during exercise. Trained observers, who were unaware of the treatment condition, also coded the infants’ behavioral responses.
The fight-or-flight response of babies whose mothers had undergone a mindfulness program was more intense when they were being ignored by their mothers and decreased more quickly after the stress was removed, compared to children in the control group. Gone. Children in the treatment-group engaged in more self-soothing behaviors, such as sucking their thumbs and even looking at their hands.”
A strong response and quick recovery are healthy because we want our bodies to be ready to act when something goes wrong, and then easily return to normal,” Bush said. There was more delay in the response. They did not react vigorously until the threat was over, and then they did not calm down easily after the threat was over,” she continued.
Bush said the team deliberately selected mothers for their research who had high levels of stress due to their life situations, including financial stress and health challenges, to make sure the intervention worked for those who were affected by it. can benefit the most.
“We hope that data like this can encourage policymakers and advocates to say, hey, this was an inexpensive, group-based intervention that reduced the depression and stress of mothers, and children at the same time.” long-term well-being,” Bush said. said.
Such “two-generation” programs that address caregivers and children at the same time are becoming more popular in California. Last year’s state budget devoted $800 million to create dyadic care benefits for Medi-Cal patients, caregivers and infants treated together for behavioral health needs.
The Home Visit Program, in which pregnant and new moms meet with early childhood professionals who provide parenting guidance, is set for a proposed $50 million increase in the 2022-23 state budget.” Babies are an incredible window of opportunity for both,” Bush said.
“We, as a society, can save a lot of money while doing the right thing for the next generation,” she concluded.
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