Children’s Minds are Getting Left Behind

by Jan Katzen-Luchenta AMI CFP

Some of the children walked up to the stage; others limped or ambled proudly using walkers or braces. Several confined to wheelchairs muscled their way through the crowded rehearsal hall up the ramp to take their places center stage.

As the syncopated beat of Stomp spilled into the uncoordinated bodies of children banging sticks to the music, I stared up at the unfinished ceiling of the gymnasium and my heart ached. I turned my gaze toward the audience watching a small group of children move their arms and legs a beat behind the music while laughing and conversing with heavy tongues and slurred speech.

Then I caught a glimpse of an autistic child sitting apart from the rest wearing a helmet and a protective vest unable to cope with the enormity of sights, sounds, and physical closeness. His personal teacher sat beside him. Several of the Special Education assistants moved their bodies to the music initially appearing upbeat and jubilant but a closer look exposed a desperate resignation. For many of these children it was a long haul to self-sufficiency and for others, dependency on a private caregiver would be a lifelong reality.

Pioneering nutritional scientific research points to the sobering truth: the incidence of children with brain disorders is escalating disproportionate to the success of improved awareness and diagnostic tools. Increasing evidence of nutrient deficiency during key developmental stages strongly suggests a correlation between inadequate diets and neurodevelopmental difficulties. Now I looked back into the crowd and surveyed the scene: children with neural tube defects, Down’s syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation. My gut twisted with this thought: what if many or most of these conditions are influenced by more than genetics or chance and are preventable with proper nutrition?

Several months later I found myself – a seasoned Montessori educator turned nutritional researcher and therapist – boarding a plane to London. It was finally time to meet my long-distance mentor, Professor Michael Crawford, the Director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition and world-renowned nutritional scientist. Professor Crawford and I had been corresponding for several years.

Classroom meets laboratory? Perhaps. But my quest to correlate a child’s individual breakfast and lunch fare to the hard science of nutrients and brain function turned out to be infinitely more involved than simply observing the dietary improvements for my three-year-old students. My relationship with Professor Crawford became a stewardship as he directed me to the province of brain growth and development in utero and the paramount importance of the nutritional status of the mother-to-be. Childless and bursting with maternal hormones, the more I learned about preconceptual and prenatal nutrition, the more I wanted to make every fertilized egg, embryo, fetus, and newborn my own.

With medical dictionary in hand, volumes of research, and tutelage from Professor Crawford (whom I now call Michael and friend) I was increasingly astonished at the mounting evidence. Nutrients are integral in the physiological pie of creation and nutritional scientists continue to publish data that suggest nutritional disorders cripple early cell division sometimes leaving the brains of our children behind.

Many of the devastating insults during brain development occur during the first three weeks of gestation when the neural tube is about the size and shape of this “C.” Health professionals and government agencies stress the importance of the nutrient, folate, or folic acid, prior to conception and throughout pregnancy. But folate is not the lone nutrient in the preconceptual wilderness. To work, it relies on both vitamin B12 for neural protein synthesis to build new cells and on zinc the transcriber of the genetic code (DNA) and nature’s premier antioxidant.

Deficiencies of folate or its accessory nutrients retard DNA growth which impacts the formation of the neural tube. Failure of fusion can lead to a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, or malformation of the spine, commonly called spina bifida. Where this tiny “C” fuses together is the stem of the primitive brain.

Anencephaly which occurs once in one thousand births, is a neural tube defect that halts brain growth. Twenty-five percent of these babies are stillborn. The remainder live long enough to wear knitted skull caps to cover their gaping craniums, awaiting imminent death.

The grey area between profound deformity, mental retardation, autism, Down’s syndrome, dyslexia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is difficult to pinpoint but is increasingly emboldened by highly sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that determines the location and timing of injury to the brain. Dr. Patrica M. Rodier of The University of Rochester School of Medicine has identified an environmental-induced, embryological origin for autism at the time of closure of the neural tube where the cranial nerve motor nuclei is forming – laying down lines of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the future brain. Imperfect connections between regions means reduced signalling between the brain’s feeling right side and thinking left side. This would reduce a person’s consciousness of their feelings, as in autism, and account for impulsiveness, compulsiveness, and diminished social skills that traditionally accompany autism. Other skills can become hyper-developed, such as instances of musical, mathematical, and artistic savants.

A cell adhesion molecule from the developing embryo and evidence of a relationship between families of children with neural tube defects has been identified in Down’s syndrome. This common thread in evidence leads us to a new scientific paradigm: nutrigenomics – the study of nutrients and their “system fingerprints” in gene expression. Though genetics provides the template for central nervous system and brain design, nutrients play a tremendous role in the enzymatic activity responsible for healthy cell proliferation. Johan Hultdin has identified a “folate trap” created by a nutritional disorder involving vitamin B6 and B12 in Down’s syndrome. Enzymatic activity for vitamin B6 is located on chromosome 21, where extra duplication (trisomy) is the hallmark of Down’s syndrome.

The small intestines develop shortly after the neural tube. Poor cellular formation of the lining can result in malabsorption of vital nutrients needed for fetal brain growth and connectivity. Impaired absorption of vitamin B12 could interfere with nerve mylenization and result in impaired nervous system development. Much of the data related to innate gut immune abnormalities and food intolerances in children with neurodevelopmental difficulties point us in the direction of a strong brain-gut interrelation.

Evidence of the power and impact of nutritional deficiency on neurological development in utero has amassed thousands of articles in scientific literature. The fetal brain grows at a prodigious rate of 250,000 neurons per minute depending on energy from the maternal thyroid which is fueled by iodine. Endemic cretinism, severe mental retardation associated with deaf mutism, is astonishingly preventable with maternal dietary iodine prior to conception.

Maternal deficiencies of vital nutrients are conclusive in the cord blood of premature and low birth weight babies. These little ones are at high risk for permanent neurological impairment at a time when perinatal fatty acids, particularly docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), fosters rapid brain growth and refines neural circuitry and signaling. The recent in-vitro fertilized embryos of the now famous California octuplets whose median birth weight is two pounds replays this risk as a sequel to the 1998 Houston octuplets involving one death and two children developing cerebral palsy.

Lesson’s learned? In today’s fast food-a-rama, nutrients are pummeled and synthesized beyond the cells recognition resulting in fake nourishment for real-life developing brains. Restoring nutritional potency into our diets by eating seeds, nuts, whole grains (germ and bran in tact) legumes, fruits, vegetables and protein from grass-fed animals and wild fish is paramount during preconception and gestation to provide the best opportunities for a successful pregnancy.

And whether our cells are “slightly used” or “over the hill” research points us in the same direction as we try to sustain mental health and reduce the risk of cognitive decline including Alzheimer’s disease.

Would the lives of the disabled performers in the production of Stomp have been any different if their preconceptional diets contained more whole/real food nutrition? No one knows for sure. But nutritional investigators all over the world are living up to the universal challenge proposed by Albert Einstein; “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Copyright © 2009 Jan Katzen-Luchenta AMI CFP

August 25th, 2009 | Tags: downs, fertility, infertility, jan, katzen, luchenta, preconception, Preconception Care | Category: Preconception Care

About Jan

As a nutritional therapist, researcher, author, and scientific writer, Jan has conducted extensive investigation into the unique and collaborative roles of nutrients as they impact human development through conception, infancy, and childhood. Jan has studied nutrition and health under the guidance of renowned professor Michael Crawford, director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition at the London Metropolitan University. She interned with Nim Barnes, founder of Foresight Preconceptual Care (Bognor Regis, England) and is the Foresight U.S. branch secretary. In collaboration with Foresight, Jan uses hair mineral analysis to assist couples preparing for pregnancy resolve nutrient deficiencies and environmental influences that compromise fertility. In addition to working as a Foresight practitioner Jan specializes in providing highly informative and individualized eating plans for couples planning for pregnancy. A former Montessori educator, Jan has worked as a nutritional advocate, interventionist, and consultant for schools. She has published numerous articles and books on nutrition with a focus on preconceptional health, brain and child development, and foods that support attention and learning.