Antidepressants during pregnancy cause alarming 68 percent increased risk of miscarriage

(NaturalNews) Back in 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that exposure to the antidepressant paroxetine (sold as Paxil, Paxil CR, and Pexeva) in the first trimester of pregnancy might increase the risk for birth defects, especially heart problems. Did this halt the widespread prescribing of paroxetine and other antidepressants for pregnant women? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

In fact, background information in a just published study in CMAJ (the Canadian Medical Association Journal) notes the drugs are frequently used in pregnancy. Almost 4 percent of pregnant women take them at some point during the first trimester -- and the result can be tragic. The new research concludes expectant moms taking antidepressants have an astounding 68 percent increase in the overall risk of miscarriage.

Most previous studies on the use of these medications in pregnancy have been small and haven't looked as miscarriages as a main outcome. But this large study by researchers from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center (CHU Ste-Justine) evaluated the association between antidepressant use in pregnancy in detail -- analyzing classes, types and doses of the drugs and the risk of miscarriage.

In all, the scientists investigated data on 5124 women in Quebec from a large population-based cohort of pregnant women who had miscarried by 20 weeks of gestation. Then they compared their findings to a large sample of women from the same registry who carried their babies full term. Of the women who lost their babies, 284 had taken antidepressants during pregnancy.

All the popular SSRI drugs were linked to miscarriage risk

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), especially paroxetine, were associated with the increased risk of miscarriage. Venlafaxine (sold under the brand names Effexor, Alventa, Argofan, and Trevilor), which is the sixth most commonly prescribed antidepressant in the U.S., belongs to another slightly different class of SSRIs called arylalkanolamine serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and, like paroxetine, it was also especially likely to cause miscarriages. In addition, higher daily doses of antidepressants and a combination of different drugs raised the risk substantially.

"These results, which suggest an overall class effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are highly robust given the large number of users studied," Dr. Anick Berard of the University of Montreal and the Director of the Research Unit on Medications and Pregnancy at CHU Ste-Justine wrote in the article.

Overall, an astounding number of Americans, some 27 million, now take SSRIs. However, as NaturalNews has previously reported, new dangers from these drugs continue to be uncovered. For example, last December Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers announced their findings that taking SSRIs significantly raises the risk of strokes and death in women after menopause (http://www.naturalnews.com/027841_S...).

For more information:
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/...

If ultrasound destroys sperm, why is it safe for a fetus?

(NaturalNews) Ultrasound is extremely damaging to the health of any unborn child (fetus). The natural health community has been warning about ultrasound for years, but mainstream medicine, which consistently fails to recognize the harm it causes, insists ultrasound is perfectly safe and can't possibly harm the health of a fetus.

Now, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a project that aims to temporarily sterilize men by blasting their scrotums with ultrasound. The burst of ultrasound energy, it turns out, disrupts the normal biological function of the testes, making the man infertile for six months.

Ultrasound, in other words, contains enough energy to temporarily deaden the testes and basically destroy sperm function for half a year. So why is it considered "safe" to blast an unborn baby with the same frequencies?

Ultrasound is loud. It no doubt causes tissue disruption and damage in a fetus, and it certainly creates stress and shock for the baby. And yet conceited yuppie parents just can't get enough of it! They want to SEE a picture of their little baby before it's even born, so they subject it to tissue damage and ultrasound trauma in order to get a snapshot they can show off to their yuppie friends. Just to clarify, I'm not opposed to medically necessary ultrasound that has a reasonable justification concerning the health of the mother of the baby. What I'm strongly opposed to is ultrasound used to take pictures of the fetus or to satisfy the curiosity of the parents. This "recreational" ultrasound is extremely selfish, conceited and may pose a very real danger to the health of the baby.

It's so American, isn't it? Damage the baby so we can get a snapshot to post on Facebook. What a way to welcome a baby into the world: Blast it with piercing high-frequency energy in order to impress your friends! Don't forget to vaccinate them, too, as soon as they are born. (And yes, some parents-to-be seriously subject their babies to ultrasound just so they can take pictures. It's demented!)

Sound is very easily transmitted through fluids, by the way, and the fetus is floating in a sac of amniotic fluid that transmits the ultrasound energy right at them.

Ultrasound harms the fetus

Here's what some other website have to say about how ultrasound harms the health of the fetus:

From The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...)

Frequent ultrasound scans during pregnancy may result in growth restriction in the womb and the birth of smaller babies, according to a study of almost 3,000 Australian women, writes Liz Hunt.

The findings, reported in the Lancet, have led to calls for more research into the effects of ultrasound, and a leading obstetrician warns that 'prenatal ultrasound by itself can no longer be assumed to be entirely harmless'.

From Midwifery Today (http://www.midwiferytoday.com/artic...)

The safety issue is made more complicated by the problem of exposure conditions. Clearly, any bio-effects that might occur as a result of ultrasound would depend on the dose of ultrasound received by the fetus or woman. But there are no national or international standards for the output characteristics of ultrasound equipment. The result is the shocking situation described in a commentary in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in which ultrasound machines in use on pregnant women range in output power from extremely high to extremely low, all with equal effect. The commentary reads, "If the machines with the lowest powers have been shown to be diagnostically adequate, how can one possibly justify exposing the patient to a dose 5,000 times greater?" It goes on to urge government guidelines on the output of ultrasound equipment and for legislation making it mandatory for equipment manufacturers to state the output characteristics. As far as is known, this has not yet been done in any country.

From NaturalNews (http://www.naturalnews.com/019910_u...)

...pregnant mice exposed to ultrasound gave birth to some offspring that suffered brain abnormalities. The mice exposed to ultrasound for 30 minutes or longer experienced a small but significant migration of brain neurons to improper places in the brain.

Sources for this story include:
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8...

Sugary cola drinks found to be a huge risk for gestational diabetes during pregnancy

(NaturalNews) According to the American Diabetes Association, approximately 4% of all pregnant women (about 135,000 expectant moms) in the U.S. develop gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) each year. These are women who have never had diabetes before but suddenly have high blood sugar (glucose) levels during the later part of pregnancies. And if not well controlled, the condition can hurt their babies -- causing newborns to be so extremely large and heavy their shoulders can be damaged during birth. The babies born to women with GDM often have very low blood glucose levels at birth and may likely have breathing problems, too. What's more, babies born with excess insulin due to their mother's GDM often become obese in childhood and they frequently grow into adults who are at risk for type 2 diabetes.

So what causes gestational diabetes? That has remained unclear -- but now scientists have discovered what appears to be one cause. A new study, published in the December issue of the journal Diabetes Care, has found for the first time that drinking more than 5 servings of sugar-sweetened cola drinks weekly prior to becoming pregnant significantly raises the risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy.

"Compared with women who consumed less than 1 serving per month, those who consumed more than 5 servings per week of sugar-sweetened cola had a 22% greater GDM risk," Dr. Liwei Chen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in the New Orleans School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said in a statement to the press.

Although scientists have not yet unraveled the precise underlying mechanism resulting in gestational diabetes, they have some strong clues. Previous studies strongly suggested that the main defect in the development of GDM is diminished secretion of insulin combined with pregnancy-induced insulin resistance.

So how do sugar-laden soft drinks fit into this? The research team behind the new study has suggested several explanations for their findings. For one thing, the high sugar intake associated with the drinks may lead to impaired pancreatic cell function. Drinking a large amount of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to a high glycemic load (GL). The large amounts of rapidly absorbable sugars cause levels of glucose in the body to spike -- and this can result in insulin resistance and impaired function of pancreatic beta cells, which make insulin.

In their paper, the scientists noted that the only significant association they found between sweet drinks and gestational diabetes involved sugar-sweetened colas. They did not find that other sweet beverages, including fruit drinks, raised the risk of GDM. Dr. Chen suggests that the explanation may simply be that sugar-sweetened colas are tremendously popular in the U.S. and, unfortunately, widely consumed in excess by women of child-bearing years.

For more information:
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-ba...