Health
The following items are listed below:-
1. Pregnant
women - effects of drinking alcohol
1. New
research has shown that even a tiny amount of alcohol can damage babies, by
effecting a baby's central nervous system.
Unborn babies whose mothers were drinking as little
as four glasses of wine a week, showed slower reflexes in special tests.
Infants born to women who drink throughout their
pregnancy will grow up with a shorter attention span than other children and
will also finder it harder to do well at school.
The new research was carried out by psychologists at
Queens University in Belfast, involving 129 women who were 25 weeks pregnant.
At that stage, babies with healthy brain activity and a normal central nervous
system should jump in the womb when a buzzer is activated on the mothers
stomach. There was a 70 % response to this startle test among babies of mothers
who did not drink alcohol, but the rate fell to 42% among drinking mothers and
was even lower for those who smoked.
Daily Mail newspaper, 27 Jan 2000, carries articles
on this issue.