You Are What Your Mom Ate

In another discovery about the importance of vitamins, scientists have been able to change the fur coat colors of baby mice by giving them four specific vitamins. It’s known that pregnant women with poor nutrition tend to have children who get diabetes and heart disease. This means you owe your hair?and your health?to how your Mom ate.

Maggie Fox writes that the researchers changed the color of baby mouse fur by feeding pregnant mice vitamin B12, folic acid, choline and betaine. Mice given these supplements gave birth to babies with brown coats. Pregnant mice not fed the supplements gave birth to babies with yellow coats that were less healthy. These vitamins are important for pregnant women as well, and if Senate bill 722 passes, you may no longer be able to buy them without a prescription.

Scientists already know that pregnant women who don’t get the right vitamins have children who grow up with a tendency to get diabetes and heart disease. The Agouti gene, which affects the coat color of mice, also affects diabetes and heart disease. Mice with overactive Agouti genes eat more because the gene affects a brain signal that controls the appetite. And if you’re overweight, you’re more likely to get diabetes and heart disease.

Scientists now think that nutrition is one of the factors that decides which genes turn on and which stay silent. Everyone inherits two copies of each gene?one from each parent. For most functions, only one gene turns on, while the other stays silent. We can’t look for yellow fur coats on our kids, but we can see that there’s an epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes in this country. Pregnant women need to learn how to eat right, so that the best genes turn on in their children.

No matter what bodies we’re born with, we need to create the best souls we can, and meditation is one way to do that.

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