American pediatricians have some simple and straightforward advice for new and expectant mothers: Don\u2019t use marijuana.<\/p>\n
The American Academy of Pediatrics has been ringing this bell<\/a>\u00a0repeatedly over the past few years, and without much success.\u00a0According to a research letter published in the journal\u00a0JAMA<\/i>\u00a0last year<\/a>, the percentage of California expectant mothers who consumed cannabis increased from 4.2 percent to 7.1 percent from 2009 to 2016. That number is expected to rise, with legalization impressing upon more and more people that cannabis is mostly benign \u2014 which it\u00a0might<\/i>\u00a0be.<\/p>\n The latest disincentive for mothers who might want to use cannabis to soothe morning sickness or to regulate mood, appetite or sleep while riding an emotionally draining hormone-fueled rollercoaster is that cannabis metabolites can end up in breastmilk.<\/p>\n A report published in the August issue of\u00a0Pediatrics<\/i>\u00a0suggests that THC<\/a> can accumulate in breastmilk at detectable levels even up to six days after the mother\u2019s last use \u2014 though exactly what threat that poses to the child, researchers can\u2019t say. They also seem to be opposed to cannabis use, but only up to a point.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen should definitely be counseled that it\u2019s not a good idea to use marijuana while pregnant. If you\u2019re breastfeeding, we would encourage you to cut back or quit,\u201d Stanford pediatrics professor Seth Ammerman, a co-author of the report, told the AP.<\/p>\n At the same time, if a breastfeeding mother keeps smoking weed, \u201cthe benefits of breastfeeding would outweigh the potential exposure to the infant,\u201d Ammerman noted.<\/p>\n That kind of contradictory advice \u2014 stop smoking weed, but if you don\u2019t, keep breastfeeding, because stopping that is worse \u2014 reflects how little medicine really knows about cannabis use and pregnancy.<\/p>\n It also reflects how little conclusive risk to date has been found.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n What studies are out there almost universally show no clear link between cannabis use and negative health outcomes for children. Consider this: if they did, you would absolutely have heard about it.\u00a0In one review of 12,000 expectant mothers<\/a>, researchers suspected a possible link between \u201cfrequent and regular use of cannabis throughout pregnancy\u201d with a small decrease in birthweight.\u00a0Another study observed<\/a>\u00a0that \u201chuman data have not identified any long-term or long-lasting meaningful differences between children exposed in utero to cannabis and those not.\u201d<\/p>\n In absence of that knowledge, doctors understandably preach caution.\u00a0In other words,<\/a>\u00a0in the eyes of pediatricians, cannabis is guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n While the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists agrees<\/a>\u00a0with the pediatricians that moms and moms-to-be should be \u201cdiscouraged\u201d from using cannabis, it also observes that \u201cthere are insufficient data to evaluate the effects of marijuana use on infants during lactation and breastfeeding.\u201d<\/p>\n Probably more important to a child\u2019s development than whether or not their mother smokes weed is whether they live in a stable household or in desirable socioeconomic services, researchers say, while still acknowledging enough negative outcomes to recommend against it while the knowledge base can be built.<\/p>\n This is a good place as any to segue into the info nugget most often referenced by the pro-marijuana set in the pregnancy debate \u2014 that \u201cJamaican study,\u201d which found infants born to mothers who were heavy marijuana users had slightly\u00a0better\u00a0<\/i>post-birth outcomes.<\/p>\n In the early 1990s,\u00a0Melanie Dreher<\/a>, who served as the dean in four major American nursing schools, went to Jamaica to see what happened to children born to mothers who were heavy marijuana users. Newborns whose mothers were heavy users\u00a0actually scored slightly\u00a0higher<\/i>\u00a0on a test<\/a>\u00a0called the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale, which gauges alertness, irritability, self-regulation and other developmental indicators in babies.<\/p>\n Dreher\u2019s work has subsequently been much-cited \u2014 but it would be wrong to call it \u201cthe\u201d Jamaican study. Another review, published in 1991, tracked the development of 59 Jamaican children over five years \u2014 and found that there was no difference between children of users and nonusers, except on two Brazelton scale indicators where they scored better.<\/p>\n Neither study suggested it was the weed itself that improved things. Instead, researchers found, kids\u2019 performance was tied to \u201ccertain aspects of the home environment and to regularity of\u2026 school attendance.\u201d In some instances at least, the pot smokers also had a more positive home environment.<\/p>\n Does this mean you should smoke weed if you\u2019re pregnant? We can\u2019t make any such suggestion. That\u2019s a personal choice you must make. But absent both data and consensus, it seems clear that the key factor is whether or not you can provide your child with a good and supportive home. If you are doing so while also getting stoned on the side, there is evidence to suggest that you\u2019re doing it right.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think there should be more research on cannabis and pregnancy?<\/p>\n The post Pregnancy & Marijuana: Who Should You Believe?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
American pediatricians have some simple and straightforward advice for new and expectant mothers: Don\u2019t use marijuana. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been ringing this bell\u00a0repeatedly over the past few years, and without much success.\u00a0According to a research letter published in the journal\u00a0JAMA\u00a0last year, the percentage of California expectant mothersContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5682,5683,605,50,900,53,415,5684,3644,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29048,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29047\/revisions\/29048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Pregnancy & Marijuana: Who Should You Believe?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"