Chemical Exposures and Baby’s Long-Term Health

It’s not always easy to understand how something that happened to your mother before you were born can have a long-lasting influence on your life. Emily Oken, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, spends a lot of time trying to understand how something that happened early in life can play out when the child is born and grows older. In this video, she shares with us what she’s learned through her research with pregnant women.
 
Watch this video to understand:
• Why it is that what a pregnant mother matters for her baby’s long-term health.
• How factors such as what a mother eats, how much weight she gains while pregnant, and if she smokes can program the appetite of a child, how much fat the fetus gains, and the amount of body fat the child gains later in life.