Epigenetics and Pregnancy – PREVIEW
It is now widely acknowledged that nutrition and other environmental factors before and during pregnancy as well as during infancy in early childhood, influence not only immediate growth and development but also have long term consequences on later health and disease.
The food that is eaten, the choice of drinking alcohol and smoking as well as other lifestyle factors such as the level of physical activity do affect our health and can even modify the expression of our genes.
Epigenetics can be the mechanism that describes how early nutrition programs long-term health.