Saxon's Survival Hour #185: Brain Damage Before Birth

Today's excerpt begins on page 84 of The Survivor Volume 1.

In my last issue I believed I had covered Minimal Brain Damage due to malnutrition.
Also, I believed that Minimal Brain Damage was not a birth defect.
I meant hereditary brain damage.
That is, such MBD was not passed on by the grandparents to the child.
I was right about the hereditary part concerning MBD but wrong about it happening only as a result of malnutrition after birth.

Since then, I've found that deprivation-caused MBD can happen as early as six months or more before birth.

On Saturday. June 12, 7:30 p.m.. ABC presented an hour-long report on "The Unfinished Child".

This program was largely narrated by Patricia Neal, who did such a fantastic job alongside Gary Cooper in "The Fountainhead".

The Unfinished Child dealt mainly with poverty groups, losers in our society, whose children are so state-linked that their surviving the fall of the State is almost impossible, regardless of how well-fed they are.
No matter.
The point is well made.
Before birth, nutrition is just as important as nutrition after birth and sensory stimulation.

The report made only vague references to the child's need for responsible parents, fewer siblings and a wholesome environment.
It was not stressed that a potential genius born to and raised by clods would probably only be a more clever clod, wiser in the ways of clods in getting "his rights".

It was a good report, nonetheless and if you missed it you ought to write to ABC TV. 1330 Avenuo of the Americas, Now York, N.Y. 10019, and ask for a reshowing.

Concerning a poverty preggy who showed up early at a clinic, Miss Neal said, because, during the last six months of pregnancy and the first two years of a child's life the brain does most of its growing.
Did you know that by the time Penny's baby is one day old, its brain will have grown 60% of all the cells it will ever have?
If Penny wasn’t eating enough (during pregnancy) and didn't feed her baby properly during those (first) two years, the baby's brain growth could be stunted and might never rocover."

She went on with genuine concern for those not reached by Federal and State funded pre and post-natal nutritional guidance programs.
"But there are thousands out there who can't get into this kind of clinic.
There just isn’t enough money.
Thousands and thousands of children are born every year in America suffering from malnutrition.
They are all part of what the sociologists call 'The Poverty Cycle'.
Now, what that means is, if your folks were poor, you're going to be poor.
And your baby's going to be poor.
It’s a lousy inheritance.
And part of that inheritance includes not getting enough to eat.

The report properly points out that family planning has gotten the lion's share of public funding.
Prevention is better than cure but unless enforced sterilization of public dependents is made law, the taxpayer must shell out more money now or prepare to slaughter more rampaging morons later.
The following figures should convince you that our society will simply not be able to afford an increasing load of public dependents.

"What you find is that all the new money that's been provided for women, in spite of the tact that it's known that there are nearly a million women a year who need help of some kind, that all the new money in the field is for family planning.
So we are much more interested in stopping pregnancies than in helping the people who do have pregnancies have a healthy one.

“Even though we are not terribly concerned about the economics of an individual baby in our intensive care nursery, the cost of intensive care for those babies works out to approximately $5000 a pound to get those babies from a birth weight of two pounds up to a weight of four and a half or five pounds when they’re ready to go home."

Clinically administered programs to prevent pre-natal damage are relatively cheap per individual case.

“I estimate that it costs $150 per case.
That's $150 including the food.
And this is a very low cost when comparing the latest estimates we have on what it would save the nation if we could prevent one case of mental retardation.
That cost is $900,000!

“Agnes Higgins (a Canadian nutritionist) figures that if a mentally retarded child can be kept out of an institution by proper feeding during (its mother's) pregnancy, the investment of $1.00 could save $6000 or more.
Now here's another statistic.
There are 13 times as many mentally retarded children in the poverty group as in any other group."

A big danger of pre-natal malnutrition is premature birth.
Not only is such an infant stunted overall, but, as reported above, it costs up to $5000 per pound for a hospital to bring it up to a normal birth-weight.
This can put most working families on welfare.

A doctor interviewed said, "When you find a child who ought to do well in school but doesn't, are there any things in that child’s background that would suggest that problem is a carry-over?
And again, you go back and you find out that there is a higher than expected incidence of small babies who later have troubles under the heading of learning disabilities."

“There can be direct relationships between low birth weight and the diet of a pregnant woman."

One pathetic drudge who had dropped eleven young said.
"On the first date I had never had no special interests and I just ate what I had to.
Then after I went to a diet dispensary and I got the last three.
I had a special diet.
They were big babies.
The rest were all small.
There were a lot of handicaps.
Brain damage in one, three of 'em had epilepsy.
They didn't mix well with other people.
They were very, very slow at home and they were much, much harder to lake care of than the normal baby.
Then the last three, well, they grew up normal, mixed very, very well, no problems in school."

Her standards of doing well in school are probably lower than mine but her point is well taken.

Another excellent point stressed In this report was breast feeding.
"At a clinic In Brooklyn, Paula Fishman talks about feeding the newborn.
And she believes Nature provides the perfect formula.

The reason that I think it's good, as a nutritionist, is because we know now, it is the best milk for your baby.
One of the reasons is that when you breast-feed your baby, you pass from your body to the baby, some resistance to infections and diseases.
That you can't do with a formula.
Formula is an acceptable substitute but the breast milk has something extra!

"Paula's convincing arguments don't work.
It's not that simple.
Most women caught in the Poverty Cycle reject breast feeding for a majority of reasons.
Feeding the baby, whether breast or bottle is an important and happy time.
It should be the beginning of a real relationship between mother and child.

"Mother and the baby need to get involved with each other and that begins to happen physically as the mother holds the baby during the feeding.
The baby responds to the mother, the mother responds to the baby, and that’s the start of communications.

“The baby who is not getting enough to eat may not have the energy or vitality to be interesting to the mother and if the mother is not getting enough to eat she may not have the energy to spend on her baby to stimulate him into play.
When that happens, often the baby ends up flat on his back with the bottle, unattended.
He gets no attention because he’s uninteresting and undemanding.
He is uninteresting and undemanding because he gets no attention.

"Another of those vicious circles.
Vicious because the physical contact and nutrition are important in getting the baby not only to survive, but to thrive.”

Not only can breast-feeding be critical to the child's future chances, but the closeness between the mother and her child in its first three days can be extremely important.
“Awake", a Jehovah’s Witness bi-weekly publication, in its July 8, 1976 issue, carried a short piece entitled, "Brainy Babies".
It stressed the importance of closeness between mother and child from the very beginning.

“Prolonged maternal contact with babies during the first three days after birth improves their speech and brain power, according to a study conducted from Case-Western Reserve School of Medicine.
Mothers who received the usual limited hospital contact with their babies were found to have less interest in and affection for their infants than those who had more contact.
The ’intimate’ mothers went on to spend more time talking to their babies as they grew up.
By age five, their babies 'had a richer vocabulary, better comprehension, and could understand more complex and mature language’, noted Dr. Normel Rlngler.
And they registered higher scores on the IQ tests."

In most hospitals you will see a room full of piteously squalling newborn babies behind glass.
I suppose this is so their fathers and relatives can see them.
But is this observation by their adult relatives more important than tho initial intimacy between them and their mothers?
Mothers should insist, before going into a hospital, that their babies be with them every possible minute.

Mongoloids and spastics are images most people have of brain damage.
But these are only the obvious signs of certain types of damage.
Brain damage may not be so easily noticed, the report continued:

Thus two children probably, at first glance, appear very normal to you.
However, if you take a closer look, they are behind in height, weight and development.

’’This Is probably a result of very poor pre-natal and post-natal feeding.
In addition to a lot of emotional circumstances on the part of the mother and her whole social history of deprivation.

’’The history of malnutrition does not occur.
It is an end-of-the-line thing.
What you do find is a lot of frail children, small children, an excessive amount of children, with small head sizes.
It’s like an Iceberg.
You see only 10% of it.
But there is 90% of it that you cannot see.

" A body less than it could have been.
A mind less than it could have been.
Behind as a baby, behind In school, behind in life.
That’s the kind of sentence that may be handed down by malnutrition."

Reasons for stunted bodies and brains can be quite specific.
A major, and tragically unnecessary cause of damaging malnutrition can be simple Iron deficiency.

’’It’s very hard to prevent iron deficiency in young Infants when they're growing very fast.
Especially in the first year of life when they triple birth weight.
One good way is to encourage breast-feeding.
Breast milk has very little iron, but that iron is well absorbed.
However in our society it’s very hard to maintain breast-feeding for more than two months or so.
The only proven way of preventing iron deficiency In the first year of life in a high risk population is by fortifying the infant formula.

“St. Jude’s Hospital is constantly on the lookout, testing for iron deficiency anemia, one of the most widespread forms of malnutrition.

“There are some indications that iron deficient children have poor attention spans and perhaps learn less well.
There are some animal studies to indicate that iron deficiency early in the growth of the animal can lead to long-standing changes in the brain.

’’The important thing to realize, of course, is that iron deficiency, like any nutritional deficiency, is completely preventable.
That, although it has been seen in 25% of the children, at the time the study was begun, this incidence has been reduced to less than 5% by providing food from the beginning of the child’s life, containing iron.
Initially iron containing formulas, and then later on, other iron containing foods.
So this is an important cause of nutritional deficiency in America today.
It's also a cause which is completely preventable."

Then of course, there is protein.
A nutritionist on the program said: "I try to get every woman to have a quart of milk and two eggs every day.
Forty grams of the highest quality protein.
And we go over the whole concept of how protein protects the mother’s liver, prevents her from having toxemia abruption as well as protecting the baby's brain.
And when we focus attention on whole grains, green leafy vegetables, yellow and orange vegetables and fruits, what nutritionists call the basic four, and when the doctor does it, it is so effective.”

The nutritionist went on about drugs: "The other thing I wanted to bring up was the drugs.
When I teach women to eat I say don't take any drug unless you absolutely need it.
And the two drugs that worry me the most are amphetimines (and diuretics).
You wouldn't believe that in the late '40s the drug industry began to promote amphetimines to hold weight down.
And they put it right into obstetrics so that women got amphetimines, and still get them in many areas, to keep their weight down.

“The other thing is diuretic pills, and as I mentioned before, up to two million women a year in this country, out of four million, (preggles, I'm sure he meant) were given water pills.”

Ideally, those finding themselves pregnant should temporarily swear off coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, etc.
Not even aspirin or any other non-prescription medication.
A woman with diabetes or any other physical or mental disability requiring long-term medication will be in bad shape when the crash comes.
Regardless of the potential effects of her medications on her unborn child, she should leave child bearing to others.

To sum it all up, becoming a diet-nut and avoiding all non-food stimulants and medications may seem a months’ long drag.
Take your mind off it with some hobby.

The little pleasures a preggy gives up for a few months will seem as nothing if the product is a healthy, joyous, lifelong friend.
But if, through stupidity and a lack of self-discipline, she damages the baby while she's still carrying it, she may later wish the expensive monster, and even she. had never been born.

Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.

He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.

He also includes a subtle sense of humor.

You can find the majority of his life's work here.

Hear him read his stories.

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