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August 23, 2022 – Carmen MesserlianAssistant Professor of Environmental Reproductive, Obstetric, and Pediatric Epidemiology, studies the world around us—how it all Chemical exposure to the Emotional crisis to the Climate change– It can affect Reproductive health and development. She directs the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Scientific Early Life Environmental Health and Development Program (SEED). Here she talks about her work.
Q: What got you interested in studying factors that affect human reproductive health and development?
A: My interest in human reproductive health and development was sparked 20 years ago while training and working as a nurse in the emergency room at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. My first patient was an eight-year-old girl who came to the ER very, very sick. We had to save her life. Later that day, she was diagnosed with leukemia. I followed her progress for months in the oncology ward. I worked in an inpatient pediatric psychiatry unit caring for a young boy who was too traumatized to live in the hospital at the age of nine. He was my patient in the room for a whole year! He was born on the streets of Montreal to a homeless and drug-addicted mother. As a newborn, he was brought into this world addicted to addiction, with multiple traumas exacerbated by early life trauma and experiences that created severe behavioral and emotional issues.
These two innocent children and their suffering have stuck with me for the rest of my life. Not a week goes by where I don’t think of these kids. Their stories and my experience of caring for them and thousands of others are untold. This is what inspires and motivates me to strive to understand and research the early life exposures and environments that can cause disease in children and how we can prevent adverse outcomes. Everything I do is trying to understand when and how it affects moms and dads before they get pregnant, or when they’re pregnant, their chances of getting pregnant, having a healthy pregnancy, and having a healthy baby. to their full potential. These are the questions we address in the SEED program, which includes a scientific team of over 25 people.
Q: Can you provide examples of research you are working on?
A: I look at things like plastic and the air we breathe from the built environment or the natural environment, not just chemicals, but also the social environment. The environment, to me, is broadly defined to include the natural, built and social environments we are exposed to in our lives. For example, my team and I are currently investigating how exposure to trauma, sexual assault, or other forms of stress later in life can affect our reproductive health. It’s amazing to be aware of our social environment, and it’s the exposures you have during childhood that can affect your chances of conceiving, carrying a baby to term, having a healthy postpartum experience, or giving birth to a healthy baby.
Early life exposures can affect your reproductive health as you age, through perimenopause and menopause and beyond. Women, and also for men in life. in Children and teenage exposure to certain chemicals, foodsSocial environments, or Stress Your body can affect the rate of maturation – they can speed up or delay puberty. These changes can affect both fertility and overall health. For women, the number of years we spend menstruating can affect our brain, heart and bone health. Environmental exposures affect our menstrual cycle, fertility, and age at menopause. Factors that affect the age at menarche or speed up our reproductive process in the past can cause changes in fertility and the age at which women reach menopause. We also have some work that shows that women who enter menopause earlier have a higher rate of cognitive decline, a different brain age, and an increased risk of age-related diseases. These are some of the hypotheses we are investigating using observational epidemiological designs combined with genetic and epigenetic data.
We have a new one. Paper On the impact of climate change on reproductive health. Species on Earth are becoming stressed and stressed by climate change. He’s not the only one. Pollution, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires are wreaking havoc—and our evolutionary capacity is being undermined. The more hostile our environment is, the harder it is to find healthy seeds. In the SEED program, we are looking at how air pollution affects cerebral palsy, how climate conditions affect it. Heat How climate affects our ability to adequately care for our children affects eggs and sperm. For example, California has experienced severe drought and wildfires. Are you going to take your five-month-old for a walk in those conditions? no. How does staying at home affect your child’s health and development? The epidemic was an example of how changes in our environment and the way society works can have a profound effect on our children’s health and the course of their lives.
Q: What are some tips for how people can protect themselves from dangerous exposures that could affect their ability to conceive, maintain a pregnancy, or have a healthy baby?
A: Do not use any products with scents or colors on your skin or in your home – such as cleaning products, soaps, dryer sheets, soaps, deodorants, face and body creams or car polishes. Those products have phthalates and phenols in them. Phthalates have been shown to harm reproductive health and affect a baby’s brain, immune system, reproductive health and development during pregnancy, while phenols have been linked to brain and heart health and reduced immunity, birth outcomes and pregnancy loss. Even small steps can help. So instead of wearing cologne seven days a week, use it five days a week or three days a week and apply it to your clothes instead of your skin. Switch to eco-friendly, more plant-based and chemical-free products with fragrances or dyes. There are affordable options to help reduce your exposure. Small incremental changes to your home, personal care products, and diet can make important changes to your body’s overall exposure.
Another thing we can do is focus on nutrition. If you can buy some or all organic food, you can reduce your exposure to harmful pesticides. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, more whole foods, less meat, more plant-based proteins. Also, try to reduce the amount of takeout or prepared foods you get in paper, plastic, or cardboard containers. Food packaging and food contact materials are loaded with PFAS chemicals. Do not cook food in so-called “microwave” plastic or any plastic. Use wood, glass or metal in your kitchen instead. Water filtration is an important family strategy. The filter is not perfect, but it can reduce some of the most common and harmful pollutants.
I want to put information like this into people’s hands in a tangible and relatable way. To help with this, my team has developed a series of educational prevention pamphlets available for download on our website. It may take decades for policy changes at the federal and state levels to lower the levels of harmful chemicals in the environment. In the meantime, I’m interested in bottom-up approaches. That’s where the power lies—from expectant moms and dads groups, teens, fertility doctors who have access to patients trying to get pregnant, OB/GYNs who consult people with miscarriages, doctors who work in child and adolescent health—trying to educate them about the harmful exposures in our environment. My focus is not on getting a high-impact paper. It is about the impact of the paper. I want to be known as the “People’s Professor”. I want my work to be relevant to the people I’m trying to find and I want to change the way we protect our reproductive health. We’re working on real-life problems that make a difference in the world.
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