• After pregnancy, some women's feet stay bigger

    By Rachael Rettner, MyHealthNewsDaily

    Pregnancy may increase a woman's foot size, a change that appears to be permanent, according to a new study.

    Researchers measured the arch height and foot length of 49 women during their pregnancy and five months after they had given birth. On average, the women's arch height decreased, and in turn, their foot length increased between 2 and 10 millimeters (about 0.1 to 0.4 inches) — during this period.

    Overall, about 60 to 70 percent of the women had longer feet and shorter arches after childbirth, the researchers said. Eleven of the women reported changes in their shoe size, the researchers said.

    While previous studies have documented changes in foot size during pregnancy, none had looked to see if the changes persisted after delivery. "I heard so many women talking about having to go buy new shoes after pregnancy," said study researcher Neil Segal, an associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the University of Iowa. This prompted Segal to look into the issue further.

    In an earlier study, Segal surveyed about 110 women at a mall, and asked if their shoe size had ever changed during their adult years. While just 13 percent of women who'd never been pregnant said it had, between 30 to 60 percent of women who had been pregnant at least once said their shoe size had changed.

    The change in foot size may be due to the extra weight women carry around during pregnancy, which puts greater stress on the feet, and, thus, may flatten the arch, the researchers said. In addition, pregnant women produce hormones that increase the looseness of the joints and ligaments (tissue that connects bone to bone), possibly making the foot structure more malleable. 

    Most of the women involved in the new study who experienced changes in their foot length and arch height were first-time mothers. Women had given birth to two or three children did not experience such significant changes. This result suggests that a woman's first pregnancy may have the greatest impact on foot size, the researchers said. But a larger study will be needed to confirm this, Segal added. (Twenty-nine of the women in the study were first-time moms; 17 were second-time moms, and three were third-time moms.)

    Changes in the feet during pregnancy may explain why women are at increased risk for pain or arthritis in their feet, knees, hips and spine than men, Segal said. A flattened foot can strain the ligaments in the foot's sole, causing changes in gait that put extra strain on the knees, Segal said.

    Segal plans to do more studies to determine if foot changes during pregnancy do indeed lead to other health problems, such as arthritis. He also plans to investigate whether modifying the footwear of pregnant women  can prevent foot flattening..

    The study will be published in the March issue of the  American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

    More from MyHealthNewsDaily:

    11 Big Fat Pregnancy Myths

    7 Facts About Home Births

    7 Embarrassing Health Problems

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  • Placenta pills for postpartum blues: Gross or drug-free treatment?

    By Jane Weaver

    Some new moms are popping pills made from their dried, ground-up placenta as a way to ease postpartum depression, reports NBC's Renee Chenault-Fattah. Some placenta fans believe it also helps with breast milk production and regulates hormones.

    But while there may be nutrients in the placenta, Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr. Deborah Kim says new moms need to seek a medically proven treatment for something as serious as depression.

    Watch the clip and let us know what you think. Would you try it?

    Some women believe consuming their own placenta can ward off postpartum depression. Psychiatrist Deborah Kim, however, tells WCAU-TV's Renee Chenault-Fattah there is no scientific evidence supporting these claims.

    Related:

    Placenta pizza? Some new moms try old ritual

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  • PSA: Meth is bad for pregnant ladies

    Hey! Did you guys know that meth is not good for pregnant women or their babies? We know. We'll give you a minute.

    Reuters Health reported on the study today. After treating three pregnant woman -- all meth users -- for uncontrolled high blood pressure, Dr. Ido Solt of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and his colleagues decided to study methamphetamine abuse in pregnancy. They compared 276 meth-using women to 34,055 non-meth-using women, all of whom delivered babies at a Phoenix hospital from 2000 to 2006.

    Solt and his team compared health factors such as preterm delivery and uncontrolled high blood pressure, and for almost every factor the researchers measured, the meth users and their babies fared worse. Shocking.

    To be fair, meth is a serious problem -- for teens, men and women, pregnant or not -- and drug use in pregnancy is nothing to be flip about. But in case you were considering methamphetamine abuse as a new hobby during your pregnancy, maybe don't? It's just science.

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  • White baby born to black parents

    A Nigerian couple just got quite a surprise: Angela Ihegboro gave birth to a white baby with blue eyes and curly blond hair, reports The Sun, a British tabloid.

    "Actually, the first thing I did was look at her and say, 'What the flip?'" says Ben Ihegboro, the baby's father, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and now lives in South London with their two other children. He says infidelity is out of the question. "My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn't been, the baby still wouldn't look like that."

    The baby, which the couple named Nmachi, is not an albino, doctors say. Ben Ihegboro says his mother has a fairer shade of skin, "but we don't know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist. But even then, what is with the long curly blond hair?"

    It's an unusual case, but it's not unheard of. Skin and eye color are determined by melanin, and the amount or type of melanin is controlled by about a dozen different genes, as Bryan Sykes, an Oxford University professor of human genetics, told the tabloid. For the Ihegboros, Nmachi's blue eyes and blond hair must be the result of a trace of white ancestry from each of her parents' genes.

    "In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child -- and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents," Sykes told The Sun. "This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing."

    Nmachi and her family have good company: In 2008, a set of twins -- one black, one white -- was born to a German couple (the mother is black, the father is white). Also that year, a British mixed race couple gave birth to their second set of twins with different colored skin. And just last week, the British tabloid the Mirror reported that a mixed-race woman gave birth to a set of twins -- she was so sure the babies would have different skin tones that she nicknamed them Salt and Pepper. (The mother is dark-skinned, and the father is white.)

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  • Woman pregnant with two babies -- and they're not twins

    Utah resident Angie Cromar has a rare condition called uterus didelphys, which means she has a double uterus. And right now, there's a baby in both of them, each at different stages of development. One is five weeks and four days along; the other is six weeks and one day along, reports ksl.com, the website of NBC affiliate KSL-TV 5 in Salt Lake City.


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    Although pregnancy in both uteruses is rare -- the chances are about 1 in 5 million -- this isn't the first recorded case. Nor is it the weirdest. In 1981, a woman with uterus didelphys became pregnant with triplets, two in the left uterus, one in the right. Babies on the left were delivered on the same day, two hours apart; baby on the right was delivered 72 days later. And in 1961, a woman with two uteruses, two cervices and two vaginas delivered two healthy babies. But even women without uterus didelphys can become pregnant with twins-that-aren't-twins. Last year, an Arkansas woman named Julia Grovenburg conceived while she was already pregnant, an example of a rare condition called superfetation.

    Discuss this story in the comments.

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