Episode 18: Stress during pregnancy with Dr. Susanne King
Host: Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. Founder of Curious Neuron
Guest: Dr. Susanne King, Ph.D.
Suzanne King, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University. She is currently running three studies of children exposed to natural disasters in utero in order to understand the nature and mechanisms of the effects of prenatal stress. Dr. King studies developmental psychopathology, and the developmental origins of health and disease. She studies children who were exposed to maternal stress in utero as the result of a natural disaster. She is currently following 3 groups of children from various natural disasters including the Quebec ice storm of 1998; Iowa floods of 2008; and Queensland floods in Australia in 2011. Developmental outcomes include cognitive development (incl. IQ, language, memory, attention), physical development (incl. body composition and obesity, metabolism, brain structure, immunity, craniofacial dysmorphology, epigenetics), behavioral development (incl. internalizing, externalizing, autistic- or psychotic-like traits) and motor development (incl. balance, coordination, fine motor, visual motor integration).
Biography reference: Douglas Research Center
Summary:
In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Suzanne King, a scientific researcher from McGill University in Montreal. We discussed stress during pregnancy. Given the pandemic, many expecting moms might be going through lots of stress. Although it might be worrisome to think of what this stress can lead to, the take-home message of this episode is that we need to look for ways to minimize our stress and after the baby is born, we can create a stimulating environment for the baby to minimize the impact.
Key Messages:
Dr. King studies 3 major areas during natural disasters: objective hardship, cognitive appraisal and subjective distress
It seems that the subjective distress might be what triggers the stress hormone release in the pregnant mother that can then go through the placenta and alter the development of the fetus.
We have control over the cognitive appraisal and subjective distress (changing how we view things)
Cortisol (the stress hormone), is released when we experience stress. There is an enzyme that converts cortisol to cortisone (which does not have a negative impact). When cortisol levels are elevated then it crosses the placenta and impacts the development of the fetus
Depending on when this stress happens during pregnancy, it will have a different impact on the fetus’s development. For instance, if a natural disaster happens in the third trimester, it may impact motor development.
If the stress happens in early pregnancy, research has shown that it may impact a child’s cognitive development
Some research has suggested that the greater the stress, the shorter the pregnancy and the smaller the baby can be
In an Australian study assessing floods, the diet was assessed in pregnant women, the greater the mother’s objective hardship the more unhealthy their diet was (which impacted the size of the baby at birth)
Other research has shown us that the head size is preserved, yet the length of the newborn body is shorter. This is called Head Sparing or Brain Sparing. The placenta is like a perceptual organ. It perceives the mother’s stress and it preserves the size of the head but at the expense of the length of the baby since you need a healthy brain but your height will not impact your functioning.
We need to remember that these are correlations and should be used as a way to educate ourselves and try to minimize the effects of stress during pregnancy. This can be done by: changing how we perceive stress for instance.
Resources
If you are experiencing symptoms anxiety, depression or any other mental help symptoms, please click the link below to find a clinician to speak with.
Click on the links below to read Dr. Kings articles
The effects of prenatal maternal stress on children’s cognitive development: Project Ice Storm
Disaster-related prenatal maternal stress influences birth outcomes: Project Ice Storm
Prenatal Maternal Stress Affects Motor Function in 51⁄2-Year-Old Children: Project Ice Storm
