Читать книгу Brain Fitness for Women - Sondra Kornblatt - Страница 36

If you get pregnant, hormones from both you and your baby have a field day (or more like field months). Because of these hormonal changes, along with strong emotions and adjustment to parenthood, up to 10% of pregnant women can become depressed at some point during pregnancy, says Dr. Channi Kumar at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.⁹⁵ Usually depression sets in during the first trimester (the first twelve weeks of pregnancy). Why?

First, the stress hormone cortisol doubles the first trimester, rising to about three times the normal level by the third trimester, say Deborah Sichel, MD, and Jeanne Watson Driscoll, co-authors of Women's Moods.⁹⁶ Some think these stress hormones could protect the baby from pregnancy stress and strengthen the mother-baby bond.

Second, estrogen and progesterone levels rise in the first trimester, and that increase can induce depressive symptoms. The levels of the hormone prolactin also increase to prepare the body for the formulation of mother's milk, and increased prolactin is associated with irritability and anger.

Anxiety, caused by hormonal shifts and possibly by the abnormal firing of synapses with norepinephrine, which triggers our fight-orflight reflex, may also be a factor in first-trimester depression.

The brain may naturally accommodate these hormonal changes and work through morning sickness, so that expecting moms feel better in the second trimester (weeks twelve through twenty-six of the pregnancy).

Incidentally, fertility treatments can act in the limbic brain and produce severe depression, unstable moods, and sleep disruptions, as well as possibly reducing our ability to pay attention.