Spot the gender of your future child 26 weeks before conception

Sarah Knapton in The Telegraph


Craving sweets, early morning sickness and a watermelon-shaped stomach are all said to indicate that a woman will give birth to a baby girl.

But an intriguing new study suggests that it is possible to determine the sex of a baby months before it is even conceived.

Scientists in Canada discovered that a woman’s blood pressure at around 26 weeks before conception predicts if she will give birth to a boy or a girl. Higher systolic blood pressure signals she will deliver a boy while lower suggests a girl.

Dr Ravi Retnakaran, endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said: “It suggests that a woman's blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl.”

The team made the connection while trying to work out what determines the ratio between girls and boys in a population.

The sex ration of a population can change depending on societal change CREDIT:GETTYIMAGES-DV1953025.JPG


Several studies have shown that stressful events such as wars, natural disasters and economic depression can change the proportion of boys and girls in a country.

The difference occurs because in stressful times one gender is more likely than the other to survive through pregnancy. So even though the conception sex ratio remains at 50:50, the birth ratio will alter depending on which sex is stronger.

In the new study the mean systolic blood pressure reading for women who had boys was 106 mm Hg, compared to 103 mm Hg for those who had girls, in the months leading up to conception.

“When a woman becomes pregnant, the sex of a foetus is determined by whether the father’s sperm provides an X or Y chromosome and there is no evidence that this probability varies in humans,” added Dr Retnakaran

“What is believed to vary is the proportion of male or female fetuses that is lost during pregnancy

“This study suggests that either lower blood pressure is indicative of a mother’s physiology that is less conducive to survival of a male foetus or that higher blood pressure before pregnancy is less conducive to survival of a female foetus.

“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans."

A simple blood pressure test could give some indication on what sex a baby will beCREDIT: ANTHONY DEVLIN


For the study, 1,411 newly-married Chinese women were recruited all who were trying to become pregnant. Their blood pressure was checked at around 26 weeks before conception and they were followed through pregnancy. Overall the women gave birth to 739 boys and 672 girls.

After adjustment for age, education, smoking, Body Mass Index (BMI) , waist, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose, mean systolic blood pressure before pregnancy was found to be higher in women who subsequently had a boy than in those who delivered a girl.

Fertility expert Prof Charles Kingsland, of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “We have been aware that more male fetuses miscarry than females and more females are born for obvious biological reasons, namely you need more women in the world to have children.

“There is also some evidence that you are more likely to miscarry a boy when you are compromised either by health or environmental issues. So I suppose, blood pressure changes in these circumstances might affect conception of different sexes.

“This study is therefore very interesting. However it does not take into account the potential physiological aspects of race. Will those changes be the same in the Caucasian or Afro Caribbean populations in the world. And what if you want a girl? Do you just go and live in Syria for a few months?”

However some experts were skeptical about the results.

Geoffrey Trew a consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London said: “I haven't heard anything like this before.

“I would be very surprised that a BP measurement , which is notoriously variable, could dictate sex 26 weeks before, some reptiles can have sex differences due to temperature changes at the time of early fetal growth , but not 26 weeks beforehand.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.

Salt: chefs are still laying it on thick

Government advice is that you should use just half a pinch of salt a day. But the only people who appear to pay any attention to this are those with cooking shows on TV

Salt has been used throughout history to preserve food, but it is also linked to many health problems. Photograph: Alamy

Cooking telly is full of frauds. Sit and watch with anyone who's worn chef's whites and they will spot a host of lazy fictions guaranteed to make them snort and pshaw. A popular one is that on TV no one puts their fingers in the food: in a working kitchen, the digits are the most used tool of all. Another is the salt thing.

On television you will hardly see a shake of the white powder. But in real kitchens, they lay it on thick: "Correct seasoning to a chef is as much salt as you can put in without it tasting too salty," Bocca di Lupo's Jacob Kennedy says. "That's why we all die young."

In his last book, Cooked, the American eco-food guru Michael Pollan gets busy preparing a piece of meat for grilling. A chef tells him to lay on the salt. "Use at least three times as much as you think you should." Shocked, Pollan consulted another pro. He agreed, but "upped the factor to five". Science explains why: long-chain carbohydrates in cooked food neutralise natural salt by binding in the sodium ions. For taste, it needs replacing.

So it's no great shock when survey after survey finds higher levels of salt from high-street restaurants – Domino's, Wetherspoon's, Carluccio's and Jamie's Italian were all putting more salt in single dishes than adults are supposed to eat in a whole day.

But what we're supposed to eat is ridiculously, you may even think unfeasibly, little. The NHS recommends just 4g of salt a day for a child (a small teaspoonful) and 6g for an adult (a large teaspoonful). But the NHS also says that up to 90% of the salt we eat comes already present in our food, so we should only be using adding 0.6g or half a pinch. My mother uses half a teaspoon of salt or more every time she sits down to eat, usually before she has tasted the food. (At nearly 80, she admits to being well preserved.)

As with so many ingredients, there's good and bad when it comes to salt.

The bad

It hardens your arteries and drives up blood pressure, leading to heart attacks and strokes. The latest medical charge against it is that it may be acting as a secret agent, "driving our immune systems to rebel against us". It may also play a leading role in multiple sclerosis. Nonetheless, wicked salt dealers are working to persuade you to eat even more. The Department of Health has said that reducing salt intake by just 1g a day – just a pinch – would save 4,147 preventable deaths and £288m.

The good

For 6,000 years it has been preserving fish and meat to keep humans alive in hard times and produce such glories as jamon serrano and brandade of salt cod. Salt is instantly vivid; it puts a shoulder to a shy taste and shoves it on to the stage. Try salting a boiled egg, or a slice of avocado, to watch something bland come alive - try it on everything, actually.

Also, get it while you can. With transfats gone and sugar under attack, salt may be the next ingredient to come under the pitiless eye of the law. Legislators in New York have already made one attempt to get salt banned in restaurants. According to Time magazine, federal legislation on salt content in packaged and restaurant food is under consideration.

What to do?

Manufactured food tends to use a lot of salt, especially if it claims to be "healthy", because salt fills in for taste when fat or sugar is removed to lower calories. But lots of basic foods we use are high in salt: bread, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, pickles and so on. And – hold on to your seats – crisps and bacon. Not to mention those damnable salty caramel-flavoured sweets.

Clearly, avoiding ready meals and processed food is one way to allow yourself more salt in your cooking. Or you could just ignore the advice, and carry on salting. Anthony Bourdain – the chef who first lifted a lid off the seamy truths of the professional kitchen, has no time for the salt police. "It's what makes food taste good," he told Time magazine. "Traditional, intelligent and skilled used of salt has become confused in the minds of nanny-state nitwits with the sneaking of salt into processed convenience foods. Nothing else encapsulates the mission of the food ideologues better than this latest intrusion: they desire a world without flavor."

So, could you cook with half a pinch a day?

Blood pressure drug 'reduces in-built racism'

A common heart disease drug may have the unusual side-effect of combating racism, a new study suggests.

Despite the study's small size and limitations, the researchers believe it raises important ethical and philosophical questions. Photo: ALAMY

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

3:34PM GMT 07 Mar 2012

120 Comments

 

The beta-blocker drug can reduce 'subconscious' racism, the Oxford University study found.

Researchers found that people who took propranolol scored significantly lower on a standard test used to detect subconscious racial attitudes, than those who took a placebo.

Propranolol is most often used to reduce high blood pressure by lowering the heart rate, as well as angina and irregular heartbeat. It is also used to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety, and control migraine.

It is thought to work by blocking activation of the peripheral 'automatic' nervous system, and in areas of the brain involved with formulating emotional responses, including fear, called the amygdalae.

The researchers believe propranolol reduces racial bias because such subconscious thoughts are triggered by that automatic nervous system.

  

Their small study took 36 white student volunteers, gave half a single 40mg dose of propranolol and half a placebo, and asked them all to undertake the Implicit Association Test - designed to test "subtle and spontaneous biased behaviour" - two hours later.

The test requires participants to visually sort particular words like 'joy' ,'evil', 'happy' and 'glorious', as well as black and white faces, into the correct categories.

Sylvia Terbeck, lead author of the study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.
"Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality.

"Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest."

Professor Julian Savulescu, of the university's Faculty of Philosophy, and a co-author of the study, said: "Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.

"Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are."

But Dr Chris Chambers, from Cardiff University's School of Psychology, said the results should be treated with "extreme caution".

He said: "We don't know whether the drug influenced racial attitudes only or whether it altered implicit brain systems more generally. And we can't rule out the possibility that the effects were due to the drug incidentally reducing heart rate.

"So although interesting, in my view these preliminary results are a long way from suggesting that propranolol specifically influences racial attitudes."

*Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias, Psychopharmacology DOI 10.1007/s00213-012-2657-5