Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET by MARGARET DICKSON looking through them, much less actually reading them. Every now and again, though, certain ones grab my attention enough to stop and sit down, and two recent issues of TIME did just that. The fi rst features the profi le of a very pregnant woman, with the intriguing headline, “How the fi rst months shape the rest of your life.” The second issue features a woman’s face fading to whiteness on one side, with this caption, “Alzheimer’s: At last some progress against the most stubborn disease.” The stories seem like bookends of human life to me, so I sat right down and read them. As the mother of three, I remember the pressure I felt to try to make sure my babies developed normally. Take prenatal vitamins and avoid alcohol and caffeine. Get plenty of rest and try not to be unduly stressed. Eat well and gain enough weight but not too much. Exercise, but not too vigorously if you are not accustomed to that. Some of us played classical music aimed at our bulging bellies, and one friend’s doctor even suggested she not use a vacuum cleaner because of the push-pull movement, advice all of us would have loved to take to heart. According to TIME writer Annie Murphy Paul, it is much more complicated than we ever imagined. Paul, a mother to be at the time, began examining the emerging fi eld of fetal origins, which is also called developmental origins of health and disease. It turns out that scientists ranging from economists to medical researchers are fi nding links between fetal experiences and adult health. For example, low birth weight babies are statistically more likely to develop heart disease later in life than people of normal birth weights. Could this be because an undernourished fetus sent nutrients to its developing brain and perhaps shortchanged its developing heart? Similarly, overweight mothers are more likely to have overweight children. Is this simply passing down eating habits or were the children programmed as fetuses? The fact that children born to mothers after they have lost weight are less heavy than those born before the mom lost weight suggests a fetal factor. At the outer reaches of fetal origin research are studies of whether and how fetal experience shapes mental health. Studies of pregnant women under extreme THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET The Dicksons take way too many magazines, and I often fi nd myself behind in Just When You Think You Are in Control stress like war conditions fi nd that those women are more likely to have children who develop schizophrenia in adulthood. Likewise, scientists are looking at how a pregnant woman’s stress levels and mental state, including depression, can shape the temperament of her child after birth. If human development is a mystery, so is human “undevelopment,” or aging. When and how do our selves begin to slip away? We have all seen this in people we know and love, and maybe we have sensed it in ourselves. Is it the normal aging process or is it an actual disease called Alzheimer’s? Alice Park gives an update in another issue of TIME. Scientists have had no way to know that for sure, because Alzheimer’s is a condition that can be diagnosed defi nitively only by autopsy. Research thus far has been disappointing, and vaccine and drug trials have not proven fruitful. All the while, Alzheimer’s patients and their families have struggled with the disease that literally erases human beings, save for their shells. Now, however, Alzheimer’s research is looking up. Genetic research is uncovering clues as to which genes are responsible for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative brain diseases. Advances in medical technology are also giving scientists and doctors better ways to peer into the human brain to fi nd and identify the signature lesions that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. More and more, experts are saying the key will be to begin treatment as early as possible and that Alzheimer’s must be fought on many fronts in hopes that its progress can be delayed, even reversed some day. And all of this is coming just in time, as Baby Boomers are morphing into Senior Boomers I have thought about these two magazine articles, both just scratching the surface of their topics, one dealing with the beginning of life and the other with the end of life. Both are hopeful and both are scary, in that they hint at what we can and cannot control about ourselves. At the end, I have to agree with Albert Schweitzer’s wisdom. “As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.” MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM NOVEMBER 10-16, 2010 UCW 5