Fetal Origins

To some extent, we all know that our genes and the environment we grow up in determines who we are as individuals. 
But in recent reseach, evidence shows that  a third factor also plays a crucial role: our uterine environment before we’re even born.

In a study to test for the realtionship between fetal environment and obesity, several British scientistsfed pregnant rats junk food including  doughnuts, marshmallows, potato chips. What resulted from this environment was offspring that ended up 25 percent fatter than rats whose mothers were fed regular rodent chow. Proving that there does exist a relationship between unterine nutrition and obesity.

In  a more shocking discovery was the realtionship between stressful uterine environment and the cycle of poverty. Low income Pregnant women tend to be more likely exposed to anxiety, hazzardous chemicals, and malnouishment. Children who are born into these stressful environments have lower educational attainment, lower incomes and worse health throughout their lives.

The reason that stress causes fetus harm may be due release of cortisol, a hormone released when a person is anxious. In other particular studies, it is shown that children who were born in during the "Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967 were more likely to have schizophrenia diagnosed as adults. And The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that Chinese born during the terrible famine from 1959 to 1961 were twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those born at other times. "

These studies were very skeptical at first, but there seems to be more and more proof that there is such a thing as fetal origins. I myself believe it. If a person is shaped by the environment they are raised in, then why cant they also be shaped by the environment they were made in?