As children age, we encourage them to eat well, battle to get them to eat their vegetables and avoid sugars — all to give them the best start in life. But our children’s health prospects may have been determined long before all the hard work. A growing body of research suggests the first 1,000 days of a child’s life — the nine months in the womb and the first two years out of it — are vital to their long-term health.
That’s one of the biggest reasons to avoid toxicity of any kind, in or out of the womb. That period can permanently affect everything from a child’s chances of developing diabetes or having a heart attack in old age, to their future weight and life expectancy.
Many have developed theories after decades of research such as Professor David Barker and his colleagues at Southampton University who found there are a series of critical stages in a child’s development. If conditions are not perfect at each step, problems can occur later.
It’s also the reason why it is vitally important to avoid vaccination during any point in this period. The refusal of significant numbers of parents to vaccinate their children has created a sizable population numbering in the millions around the world that will raise a number of important public health issues as a very large demographic of the population is now growing without vaccines.