Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: mm on 27/06/2003 08:37:51
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Hello, everyone.
My host's grandaughter has been learning swimming since she was a few months old.
I was told that babies automatically stop breathing under water.
How do they do that? [?]
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I think it's their nature, inside the uterus there are a lot of liquids inside (I don't know what it's called so I used liquid). Did you see it on the news where they reported a baby swimming just a few months old as well or was it a bit older?
But I think a bit of teaching is still required.
Tom
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quote:
Originally posted by nilmot
I think it's their nature, inside the uterus there are a lot of liquids inside (I don't know what it's called so I used liquid). Did you see it on the news where they reported a baby swimming just a few months old as well or was it a bit older?
But I think a bit of teaching is still required.
Tom
Tom, the fluid you are referring to is amniotic fluid. [:)]
Resident Tour Operator - The Naked Scientists
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Don't quote me on this but I have a feeling that there are primitive reflexes programmed into us, which are thought to date back to our aquatic origins, which are responsible for altering our physiology during immersion.
The mammalian diving reflex is one such example whereby contact with water initiates a reduction in blood flow to non-critical body areas (gut and skin) with preferential supply to the heart and brain and thus a reduction in oxygen consumption. A similar switch is triggered to allow diving mammals like whales and seals spend long periods submerged.
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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I read an article about teaching your babies to swim when I had an infact and a swimming pool. The infants do have a diving reflex, but the article said the infants weren't actually swimming. They were moving their arms and legs in an effort to raise their heads above the water, and since their arms couldn't contact anything solid, they kept thrashing about. Said it is really frightening to the infants and they didn't recommend that they be taught to swim using that method.
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i will agree with the first post that before birth the embryo is protected by the amnion and corion layers which contains fluid to prevent it from jerks so the child is a bit habitual with such dilema and his breathing mechanism is also different there so he atonce stops breathing but if it take long and his oxygen requirment is not fufilled as it was done previously he will starts breathing and this is dangerous
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I've heard of under-water births. If I were to do it over again, my sons would have been delivered this way, if given the choice. Does anyone know about the details of this?
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The LeBoyer (sp?) method. Sure have heard of it. It's supposed to be a very non-traumatic birth. As I understood it, the babies weren't born underwater but placed in a warm bath when delivered. It is said they actually smile. There were some statistics that indicated they had less colic, were more intelligent, and better adjusted in school. I wanted to do it with my last child, but I had a stillborn in between my two girls and she was anencephalic, which put me in the high risk pregnancy category. Therefore, they wanted all the lights on, and all equipment nearby. Why I don't know. The ultrasound did not reveal any neural tube defects. I think the obstetrician was more neurotic about it than I was. I've never known anyone who had their babies that way. Would love to speak to her is she's out there. Seems like a more humane way to bring them into the world.
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I've been reading that the birth experience has a huge impact on the psychological health of every human. Does anyone know more about this theory?
This concerns me because my son had "the worst possible delivery" in the words of the OBGYN who was called in. Then he spent the first four days of his life in ICU.
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The physician who hypnotized me for motion sickness said that he was hypnotized back to his birth experience and could remember what was said in the room. Being skeptical, I asked him how he knew his memories were accurate, but he was able to speak to the people who were present and they confirmed his memories. Since then, I have never allowed any negative conversation around my surgery patients or any unconscious patients. What was amazing to me about the birth experience is that you're not even able to understand language as a newborn, but somehow your mind must record it and interpret it later. My own motion sickness was related back to a fall that my mother had when she was eight months pregnant with me. And when I asked my Mom, she remembered the falling down a flight of subway stairs in New York city, and my grandmother standing at the top of the stairs screaming, "You're going to lose that baby," in Greek, no less. To this day, I don't speak Greek but understand a lot of it when I hear it, having grown up with my grandparents always nearby. But my mind recorded and interpreted that statement. That's incredible.
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Bezoar I'm glad you take such an interest in your unconscious patients. There's a good movie called The Doctor that illustrates your point quite well.
When I have surgery I can tell you how I was treated while unconscious. No specifics, but I come out of it with an overall impression.
I have a theory (what's new?) about oxytocin. A mother's body naturally produces oxytocin at birth to help shrink the uterus back to normal size and has a positive effect on the bonding process between mother and child. It also "erases" the infant's memory.
I think that women with low levels of oxytocin during the birth process probably have a greater chance of getting stretch marks, have more distant relationships with their children, and the children remember their lives beginning at a much earlier age than average.
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Oxytocin is also release during orgasms and in response to suckling a baby. This good-vibe hormone therefore probably underlies the mother-baby bonding that takes place early post-partum.
The bit about being able to remember things said around you before you are even born I take with a monumental pinch, no call that a titanic-sized pinch, of salt !!
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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Chris, you know how well a fetus is developed before it is born. I know they can hear in-utero because I put a headphone with whale sounds on my stomach while I was pregnant. The baby moved toward the sound every time. It was great fun watching (and feeling) the bumps move toward the headphone. I'd move it from side to side and Steve always followed. I imagine it's like listening while your head is under water.
I suspect that Bezoar's motion sickness stemmed from the tumbling motion when her mother fell more than the words spoken by her grandmother. Cellular memory is a powerful concept.
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Donnah - I agree that babies respond to stimuli, that is after all a skill we all use until the day we die. But I dispute that babies can form complex memories, particularly of speech, in utero or neonatally. That's like saying that someone showed you a book covered in writing when you were a baby and then when you learned to read you could suddenly 'remember' what it said on the page. Memory is not stored in such a faithful objective manner. In the same way that computer images are compressed, with the loss of some information, so it is with our memories. They are heavily influenced by context and are very subjective. There is no way you would remember sounds faithfully enough to later compile them into speech you could comprehend.
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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As far as my memory, I would agree that most of the fear was probably due to the tumbling motion, but how do you explain the doctor, and I do mean medical doctor, well respected and not an alternative medicine doctor, remembering what was said in the delivery room and being able to confirm some of his memories? It sounds bizarre to me too, but that's not the only case I've heard of. Read of another case where someone had this complex about being ugly all her life, and that was related back to a comment made in the delivery room about her being an ugly baby.
When I worked ICU, I always spoke to my patients and they thought I was crazy. Well, disregarding the insanity, in three years in one of the most critical ICU's in the country, I only lost two patients. Not to say that they didn't die on other people, but not on me. And I started every shift introducing myself to my unconscious, intubated patients, and letting them know what day it was, what time, what was in the news headlines. Then I concluded by saying, "And you are so lucky I'm your nurse tonight, cause all my patients get better." More often than not, they did improve during my shift, and at the least, they held ground. Then too, how about when a patient has brain surgery and they stimulate different areas of the brain evoking past memories? Seems like it's all stored there somewhere, just not all easily accessible. And past life memories -- that's another whole discussion.
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Chris, the logical side of me wants to agree with you regarding fetal speech perception, but my intuition is going off like fireworks here. I think Bezoar has brought a really interesting scenario to our attention. What if...cellular memory is passed on through the generations? A fetus would understand the language of his/her parents, grandparents, and who knows how far back?
Bezoar, you are right, your patients were lucky to have you for a nurse. A little encouragement can go a long way sometimes. My OBGYN once congratulated me on changing my life in such a positive way. I was not getting any support from the people around me at the time (now history) and life was difficult enough to make me question if it was worthwhile. Yet here was the man who had saved my son's life at birth telling me that I had accomplished something rare and great! I went out to my car and cried with relief. Twice this man made a huge impact on my life.
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There's more to medicine that just textbook medicine. The intuition you develop after time comes about so slowly that you're unaware until another peer calls it to your attention. When I worked the ER once time, a 35 year old man came in with chest pain. I took one look at him, put him in the monitor cubicle, and began working him up as a heart attack. Which it was, and highly unusual in a man that young. That was before I even got a history, and my fellow nurse and good friend asked me, "How did you know?" And that's the part you can't explain. A heart attack has an expression that's just about universal on everyone. A face I call controlled panic. After a while, you just come to know that face.
Too bad you never let your doc know the effect his words had on you. The right words at the right time can change lives. And you always feel good if you were the one blessed enough to have uttered the words. Knowing the words to say that go straight to the heart -- that's a real gift.
What about cellular memory? Do you know that sometimes people who have organ transplants begin to experience the memories of the donor? I think that's really weird, and good material to write a book or movie about. Chris, what's your take on that? And the people who experience the memories of the donors, is it only those with chimerism?
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I agree 100% with you about the 'face' or presentation of certain conditions. When we doctors talk to each other we ask of a patient "are they unwell?". That might sound a bit strange because if they weren't 'unwell' they wouldn't be in hospital. But there is a world of difference between 'unwell and going to get better' and 'unwell and getting worse'. You learn to recognise a sick patient, who can actually look quite well initially, and to act accordingly. In the context of emergency medicine, it's usually the least ill ones who make the most noise and moan the most. They are usually the ones that can wait the longest...and often do as a result !
About this cellular memory business. I'm sorry, but that's rubbish. A transplanted kidney cannot convey memories, otherwise everyone on dialysis would develop amnesia !
Having said that, one kind of memory that a transplant recipient can develop is the allergy profile of their donor. People who undergo bone-marrow transplant start to make all of the same immune components as their donor, including self-reactive elements and antibodies that can initiate allergies. A previously non-allergic person can develop hayfever. There you go a kind of memory passed by a transplant to a recipient !
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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That's interesting. I would have thought the immunosuppressant drugs might have suppressed the development of new allergies.
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"The great shock of twentieth-century science has been that systems cannot be understood by analysis. The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can be understood only within the context of the larger whole. Thus the relationship between the parts and the whole has been reversed. In the systems approach the properties of the parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole. Accordingly, systems thinking concentrates not on basic building blocks, but on basic principles of organization. Systems thinking is "contextual," which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole." - Fritjof Capra from The Web of Life
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quote:
Originally posted by bezoar
That's interesting. I would have thought the immunosuppressant drugs might have suppressed the development of new allergies.
You're right, but once the immuno-suppression is tailed off the problem then discloses itself...
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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A reflex called the bradycardic response makes babies hold their breath and open their eyes when submerged in water, says Jeffrey Wagener, a pediatric pulmonologist in Colorado. (Parents can cause this same reaction by blowing in their baby's face, a response that disappears after about 6 months. I guess this must be the reason. But is it really safe to teach a baby only months old to swim?