Pregnant Mothers with Heartburn Can Expect Babies with Lots of Hair
New Study Shows Old Wives' Tale to Be True
It turns out that these mothers may be right after all. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have released a study in the journal Birth showing that a correlation between heartburn and the hairiness of a newborn actually exists.
The research was conducted by Kathleen Costigan, a registered nurse in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at John Hopkins, and colleagues. The study followed 64 women throughout pregnancy. These women were asked to rank the severity of their heartburn symptoms. When their babies were born, two independent observers rated the thickness of the newborn hair using photographs taken after birth.
Seventy-eight percent of the pregnant women reported some level of heartburn, and were able to participate in the study. Of the 28 women who reported moderate to severe heartburn during pregnancy, 82% gave birth to babies with above average hair thickness. Of the 12 women who reported no heartburn symptoms at all, 83% gave birth to babies with very little or no hair.
Costigan writes "Contrary to expectations, it appears that an association between heartburn severity during pregnancy and newborn hair does exist." She adds, "We've heard this claim hundreds of times, and I've always told people it's nonsense. Since the study came out, I've had to eat a lot of crow."
While investigating this myth, I personally ran across a number of websites that are going to have to do the same.
The authors of the study speculate that women suffering from heartburn have slightly higher levels of estrogen throughout pregnancy than non-sufferers. Estrogen relaxes the sphincter at the base of the esophagus, which allows acid to reflux from the stomach and cause heartburn. Other independent research has show this same hormone to be responsible for hair growth in the developing baby.
These same researchers are also looking at other wives' tales including how the mother's stress levels affect their babies, and whether mothers can accurately predict the sex of their children (they report that 70% usually can!).
Source: The journal Birth http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2006.00128.x
Published by Frogdoc
I work as a biologist, researching the effects of environmental change (contaminants, ultraviolet radiation, etc) on amphibians. I have a wonderful husband and two babies that I love to spend time with. View profile
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21 Comments
Post a CommentPersonally, I think that there is a connection between heartburn in pregnancy and the baby`s gender
Personally, I think that there is a connection between heartburn in pregnancy and the baby`s gender
Its really a nice and informative blog..
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My heartburn was horrific throughout my entire pregnancy. I would take Pepcid twice a day, Zegrid, 4 tums every few hours, glasses of milk, and cut out all spicy and acidic food.... to no avail. The heartburn would literally keep me awake for hours at night, as it was obviously worse when laying flat. My baby was born with an incredible amount of hair. You can barely find her scalp.
This study did not say that if you had heartburn your baby will for sure have a lot of hair. It said 80-something percent. Re read it before you contradict it please.
Getting heartburn later pregnancy is normal due to lack of room - hormones or not. However, getting heartburn during the first trimester is usually attributed to hormones. If Estrogen is indeed the hormone responsible for heartburn in the first trimester AND hair-growth, wouldn't this theory make more sense? Perhaps these studies should focus on WHEN the heartburn occurs rather than IF. This might explain why some mothers experience heartburn but give birth to bald babies...just a thought.
When I was pregnant with my son I couldn't get enough Mylanta. It was so bad I NEVER used a spoon and drank it straight from the bottle. Yeah, my son was bald too.
With my 1st I had Horrible Heart burn and yeah, she was born BALD!!!!
I again have terrible heart burn and am Due in May so we'll see.
In my Master's research class, we were taught to be skeptical of studies with small sample sizes. There may well be something to this, but I'd like to see more than 64 women followed throughout pregnancy. Also, there is no mention of what race these women were, or how these particular women were selected. These factors may or may not enter in as well. 64 is a low number of women studied, to automatically generalize it to the whole population. There should be more studies done of this kind so we could see if a meta-analysis yields the same thing! It would be exciting to find out!
I KNEW there was a connection. With my first pregnancy I had brutal heartburn and my baby had so much hair! Now In my 2nd pregnancy and what helps me through the hearburn is thinking and hoping the new baby will have beautiful hair! `