According to a recent report, as much as half a cup of coffee per day could stunt a baby’s development and gestational age while still in the fetus. The research found that children born to mothers who drank 50 milligrams of coffee each day or half a cup of coffee weighed 2.3 ounces less than infants delivered to a woman who did not take caffeine. According to principal investigator Jessica Gleason, that volume is a proportion of the regular caffeine intake cap set by the American School of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the WHO.
Even A Small Amount Of Coffee During Pregnancy May Affect The Weight Of The Infant
She works for the National Institute of Child Health and Social Development in the United States as a postdoctoral scientist. Gleason explained, “ACOG advises that women who are pregnant restrict their caffeine intake with less than 200 milligrams per day, and the WHO advises or less 300 milligrams per day, and our findings do hold out in light of those guidelines since we’re noticing that even at reduced ranks, we see all these slight reductions in size,” adding that “we still suggest that people address their coffee intake.”
This research went a step forward by determining the precise amounts of coffee and its metabolite, paraxanthine, in blood specimens obtained around 10 and 13 weeks of childbirth from over 2,000 women at 12 medical centers around the United States. The scientists found that children born to expectant mothers with the maximum coffee rates in their blood were around 3 ounces smaller, 0.17 inches thinner, 0.11 inch shorter in face diameter, and 0.13 inch smaller in thigh width than babies born to women with no or low coffee rates in their bloodstream.
Although the findings are troubling, Dr. Jill Berkin, an associate director of parental nursing at the Mount Sinai Healthcare System in NYC, says expectant mothers must not throw out certain caffeine grounds tea packets and diet colas just yet. And she added the findings of this study contradict prior studies, which showed no significant correlation among caffeine and fetal development”.
Furthermore, the impact of coffee on infant weight and size reported this was not significant, so it’s difficult to tell if such infants will experience any of the long-term safety implications usually correlated with fetal growth stunting, according to Berkin. According to the scientists’ research notes, these results may have an elevated risk of overweight heart disease and obesity earlier in career.
Berkin explained, “This was a very slight change in body weight, just around 3 ounces. It’s unclear if the 3 ounces would have a long-term medical effect on the baby; we recognize that kids in the ten percentile for predicted weight for gestational have worse results, but not lower declines in projected fetal weight, so whether it’s medically important or not is still unclear.”
Gleason said, “While the findings of a particular research will not enable us to create any suggestions, only this data can spark further studies into low-level caffeine intake and infant size and growth limits.”Coffee intake while pregnancy affects more than just birth size: a study released this year in the paper Neuropharmacology reported that consuming much more coffee while childbirth was related to a greater risk of behavioral issues in kids.