Pregnant? You May Want To Eat More Fish To Boost Your Baby’s IQ

Parents always want their children to blossom into smart, intelligent, and wise individuals to sail smoothly through life uncertainties once they grow up. Parents want their children to have the ability to make the best decisions possible as mature individuals that would benefit them in the areas of education, love, finances, home, and general living, which would ultimately lead them to live a full and happy life. For this to happen, parents have to ensure that they give their children a balanced upbringing full of love, laughter, education, values and beliefs, and, most importantly, well-balanced nutrition and healthy nutrition. This quest to produce a more intelligent offspring starts when the baby is in the womb of an expecting mother, and the seed of this smartness is sown at this very nascent stage of development.

As pregnant women, the do’s and don’ts list is an endless, exhausting, and tedious one. There are food items that provide essential nutrition required by pregnant women; however, specific studies and advanced research levels have thrown light on other food items that bring about more intelligence, smartness in unborn kids, and increased IQ. One such food category is seafood. Women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning should consume seafood that contains essential ingredients such as omega-3 fatty acids, iron, and protein.

The best variety of seafood that pregnant women should consume is salmon, tilapia, shrimp, tuna, cod, and catfish. However, pregnant women should limit fish intake, where mercury levels are concentrated like swordfish, tuna, mackerel, and shark.

Omega-3 fatty acids, found uniquely in seafood, such as tuna, provides an essential foundation for the baby’s brain to develop normally. Studies have found a link between a mother’s consumption of seafood during pregnancy and a child’s IQ test performance. The study conducted by Dr. Joseph Hibbeln of the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that women who didn’t consume fish during pregnancy were likely to have babies with poor communication skills at 18 months. They would have poor fine motor coordination at three and a half years old, and below-par social behavior at age 7. Women who ate more fish are more likely to breastfeed.

During pregnancy, eating fish ensures the right balance of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty essentials acids essential for an unborn child’s brain development. However, non-consumption leads to an imbalance of these fatty acids and may lead to premature fetal neural stem cells’ premature aging. A 2016 study from the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona suggested that mothers who ate three sizeable fish servings every week in their pregnancy improved their child intelligence scores at school. Also, the study indicated that seafood consumption might protect the child against autism.

Consuming fish in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy increased the visual and cognitive test results in young children. Apart from the fact that eating fish boosts your child’s IQ levels, it has other benefits as well. Not having an adequate amount of Omega-3 fatty acids can have a detrimental effect on the baby’s eye development and may not do so well in eye tests compared to mothers who consume them during pregnancy. Babies of mothers with higher DHA levels, found in Omega-3 fatty acids, showed significantly quieter and less active sleep and less sleep-wake transition than those with lower DHA levels. Due to all these factors, the natural outcome is that kids do better in school and obtain better grades.

There has been that perennial conflict of not consuming fish during pregnancy due to them containing high mercury levels; however, mercury concentration is different in various types of fish. Pregnant women can determine the dosage post consultation with dieticians. But yes, the 1basis of various expert studies and countless experiments conducted, it has been proven that experts highly recommend our little skiddy friends from the sea help in the overall development of our little ones and. They are slowly but surely becoming a non-negotiable constituent of pregnant women’s diet because of proven benefits so that kids tomorrow may be smarter, healthier, and live meaningful lives full of happiness and prosperity.

Also Read:

Those Pregnancy Craving: The Baby wants what the baby wants!

Nutrition for 9 months – Lifetime of Happiness

Anushka’s Stylish Re-Definition Of Maternity Fashion

You May Also Like: