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Fatty acids are important. But what are they, and why do we need them?
Fatty acids are
substances which we take in the diet every day.
They come in a variety of types, some of which you may have heard that we call saturated fats.
The one's we're particularly interested in are group of polyunsaturated fatty acids
called the omega 3 fatty acids. And within that group,
of which there are several members, one in particular called docosahexaenoic acid,
which I will now abbreviate to DHA from this point onwards,
is principally important for making
a brain. This particular polyunsaturated fatty acid,
DHA, is need in order to make the connections
between nerve cells. These connections are the whole basis on
which the brain functions, and the level of function of these connections
depends, to some extent, on the amount of this fatty acid,
DHA, which is present.
So how do we get DHA? So there are two ways in which the mother can
acquire this DHA. One is from her diet, and this is where eating
oily fish comes in. The other possibility
is to make it in her body from
a rather smaller fatty acid molecule which goes by the name of
alpha-linolenic acid, which during pregnancy women adapts their
metabolism. The way in which the body processes
fats, in this case, to increase the amount of DHA
in her blood stream. Mothers being able to make this
DHA means that the mother's body
isn't leaving the development of the baby's brain to chance.
Not all women are able to make DHA at the same
sort of level. We've been looking into this,
and we've been trying to understand how the genes
which control the production of DHA
are themselves regulated. And this brings us into a very new
area of science called epigenetics. And this
basically means that it controls how hard genes work at any one time.
So the secret to building a brain is that
mothers do amazing things with their fatty acids, they
get them to the child before they are born,
and in the early days of feeding, and that's
building up the best brain for that child.
And that's a very remarkable thing. But what we now need to understand is where the variation
between women comes from
in terms of ability to make DHA, and perhaps which women are
at risk of not being able to make enough themselves, who then
may need to take a bit of action in their diet. So we're looking at how we research
the differences between different women,
their ability to produce DHA, how that translates,
and putting that into practical studies. Exactly. So there's two levels. One
is that "Can we identify women who might need a little bit of extra DHA in their diet?".
The other which is a much longer term
aim is to actually change the epigenetic control of the
genes, and there are ways through nutrition which you can do that,
particularly around the amount of folic acid and vitamin B12
in the diet, which may provide another route
which will help mothers make enough of the DHA themselves if
they can't do it with the way their body's organised naturally.
So it seems that this is a fairly solid, optimistic story
for women, that if they keep doing what they're doing, taking folic acid,
then we're on the right path. There are lots of benefits to
taking folic acid as recommended by the UK government at present
in order for women to protect their child. And I think that's probably the message
that I'd really like to leave you with.