Tag Archives: child

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #59 – Randy Jirtle, Ph. D. – The Imprintome and Hope

Randy Jirtle, Ph.D.
This week’s guest is Professor Randy Jirtle.
Dr. Randy Jirtle joins the show for the second time today to discuss his new research on the imprintome, the regulatory regions that at the earliest stages of fetal development control our epigentic and thus our genetic outcome. This is the Hope locus.
Time Magazine nominated him for person of the year in 2007 and had this to say about him: “Dr. Jirtle’s pioneering work in epigenetics and genomic imprinting has uncovered a vast territory in which a gene represents less of an inexorable sentence and more of an access point for the environment to modify the genome. His trailblazing discoveries have produced a far more complete and useful understanding of human development and diseases” — Time Magazine. This interview is ground zero for the Women and Children First Podcast as we discuss the underpinnings or mechanisms of disease risk for all humans as it relates to the environmental inputs of our lives that are driving health or disease at both the pregnancy and post natal periods. We look specifically at how maternal nutrition and later chemical exposure directly affected the health of the agouti mouse offspring. This experiment was the first of its kind and paved the way for a complete shift in human disease understanding. For parents, this podcast is really the beginning of everything that I am trying to convey regarding a healthy pregnancy and childhood. Without this interview, the following interviews will be more difficult to understand. The picture becomes very clear once his research is cemented in our minds.
His biography is as follows: Professor of Epigenetics at the Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, and a Senior Scientist at McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. He was previously professor of radiation oncology and associate professor of pathology at Duke University, Durham, NC, where he had been a faculty member since 1977. He graduated with a B.S. degree in nuclear engineering in 1970 and a Ph.D. degree in radiation biology in 1976, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His awards list is long but the key to Dr. Jirtle is that he is a curious thinker and we are grateful for this.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Randy Jirtle,
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 13 Issue 40

Maternal Microbiome Part II
Mom has a gut microbiome that directly seeds her babies microbiome. This microbiome dictates human long term and short term health. Eating a diet loaded with fiber based fruits, legumes and vegetables will cause a highly diverse bacterial microbiome to exist and this existence is correlated with better long term health……plus a section on mate matching as well as the recipe of the week!
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast – Putting It All Together #2

This week on the show, I sit down to put the recent four maternal/child health podcasts into perspective. How are these four experts tied together? We, again, examine the basic underpinnings of maternal health risks through the eyes of these thought leaders in preparation for the next series of discussions. Laying important foundations to build our health literacy upon, is critical in my mind. This show is also a way for the folks that are “on the go” to get a summary of the podcasts for their benefit.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #11 – Dr. EA Quinn, Breastfeeding Through History

Dr. EA Quinn and I had a wide ranging discussion on breastmilk from an evolutionary perspective for podcast episode #11.
Dr. Quinn is a biological anthropologist with a specialty in human biology. Her research is broadly focused on understanding the ways in which human milk is an essential part of human biological variation and how such variation has been selected for by different ecological pressures.
Her primary research project at present is Infancy @Altitude, a longitudinal birth cohort study of ethnic Tibetan mothers and infants living in the Nubri Valley, Nepal. She is investigating the ways in which ecological pressures – in this case the ecological pressures of hypoxia, chronic cold stress, shorter growing seasons, UV radiation, and infectious diseases – create selective pressures on human milk and how this translates into adaptive patterns of child growth.
One of the major findings of this research was elevated milk fat in the high altitude sample compared to other previously studied human populations and lower levels of metabolic hormones than predicted based on maternal body composition.
Breastmilk is a magical human derived food and medicine all wrapped up into one. The magnificence of human milk is on full display during this hour long podcast.
I hope that you enjoy my conversation with Dr. EA Quinn,
Dr. M