renee.t.edge The three most profound factors influencing brain development are:
- Toxic stress and inflammation
- Presence of strong social support and secure attachment
- Provision of optimal nutrition
Malnutrition in early childhood impacts the brain in four ways:
- Myelination (32 weeks-2 years) Allows nerve cells to transmit information faster and provides for a healthy Central Nervous System. Myelination issues result from a lack of fatty acids. However, nutrition, and psychosocial stimulation go together. Undernourished children are frequently ill, fussy, irritable, and withdrawn leading to caregivers treating them more negatively than they would treat a happy, healthy child.
- Hippocampus (32 weeks-18 months) Hippocampus addresses recognition and spatial memory. The hippocampus plays a critical role in binding together item and contextual information together and processing the relationships between individual items. A research study in India showed that malnutrition had a greater effect on the immediate memory of boys as compared with those of girls. Malnourished boys had greater impairment of immediate memory for words, pictures and objects, while malnourished girls had greater impairment of immediate memory for only pictures. Delayed recall of words and pictures of malnourished boys was impaired.
- Neurotransmitter systems (PreNatal-3 years) Neurotransmitters mediate reward, affect, and mood. Scientific data suggest that the development of both neural and nonneural elements are significantly affected by malnutrition. This includes processes and substances important for neurotransmission such as transmitter synthesis, degradation and receptor sites. Because many neuropsychiatric conditions, such as anxiety, depression, ADHD and more can be traced to dysfunctions in the neurotransmitter system , it is possible that some of the central nervous system abnormalities which result from childhood malnutrition may be a consequence of a modification in synaptic biochemistry.
- Pre-Frontal Cortex (0-6 months) Prefrontal cortex controls complex processing behaviors such as attention, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behaviors.
Looking at these impacts we see that children are likely to be fussy and irritable, have a central nervous system that may not communicate effectively, struggle with recognition and memory, struggle with response to reward, affect and mood, as well as struggling with attention, decision making and moderating social behaviors. What a difficult challenge to be starting off life with!
Do we need to look a this child and assume the damage is done and there is no hope of repair? No, the brain is plastic, meaning it can continue to grow, change, and heal over time. Changing the nutrition of the child in our care can have a huge impact on the brain development, and can aid in remediating some of these effects and impacts.
Feeding the brain the nutrition it was lacking in early life can aid the brain in healing and re-building from the impacts of early damage. This does not take specialized medication, but can be done with whole foods found at your local grocery store! Simple and easy changes to the diet can have a huge impact on the physical and mental health of your child, changing their learning experience at school, changing their interactions with the family, and shifting how they are feeling physically and emotionally.
