Why We Wrote YOU: Having a Baby?

Tackling the major health issues of our time is our passion. Writing books on obesity, aging, and beauty made it clear that the seeds of these issues can be sown as early as conception. So we set our sights on moms-to-be. Our goal: to capture your attention when you’re most tuned in to your body -- when you’re pregnant -- and help you lead a healthier life for yourself and for your baby. And because half of all pregnancies are unexpected, our advice applies to all women of childbearing age.

Together, we’ll travel to the frontiers of medicine to explore how food, stress, and a new science called epigenetics affect the lifelong health of your baby -- not to mention that of your baby’s babies. That’s the amazing part about epigenetics. The small changes you make today can affect generations long after you’ve said goodbye -- so your responsibility for creating a healthy environment for your offspring is even bigger than you thought.

To give you a basic understanding of how epigenetics works, let’s compare it to how music is created. You and your partner each have your own set of DNA, and through your recent rendition of a boogie-woogie, you made your own biological song in the form of a baby. That genetic coding is indeed fixed, but you still have the ability to interpret the song and change the way your offspring’s genes are “expressed” (science-speak for turned on or off). How? By what you expose your baby to in utero, via the foods you eat and the cigarettes you don’t inhale. They serve as biological light switches in your baby’s development. On, off, on, off -- you decide how your child’s genes are expressed.

You don’t have total control, though. We still don’t know how you can change your baby’s eye color, or when his hair falls out. But we do know how to influence some really important factors, such as your child’s weight or intelligence. We’re here to help you make the most of the 280 days that your baby is on the inside to teach him how his body should act on the outside. Start with this list of things to avoid. We’ll also explain how both your mental and physical health affect your baby and how -- at the same time -- pregnancy affects your mind and body.

If this is not your first pregnancy, don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t know much about epigenetics the last time around. None of us did. While epigenetics plays a role in what happens before birth, you can actually influence gene activity after birth -- for this child, for previous children, even for yourself. Also, if you fear you’ve already done something damaging to this baby, rest assured that human beings are a resilient lot; otherwise we’d have died out ages ago. The key is to stop and make a YOU-turn, reversing damaging behavior as soon as possible.