No such thing as pregnancy brain
October 12, 2008 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Women's Health
Pregnant women hear it and many even say it themselves – if something is forgotten or confused, it’s blamed on pregnancy brain. It’s long been assumed that pregnancy renders a woman incapable of rational decisions and that the hormones that help sustain the pregnancy makes us all a little off kilter.
Well, unless you want to use pregnancy brain as an excuse, researchers at the Australian National University’s center for mental health research found that there is no evidence to suggest that pregnancy affects a woman’s cognitive ability.
The researchers interviewed and tested 2500 women who were in their early 20s once, in 1999 and again between 4 and 8 years later. Of the 76 women who were pregnant during the later interviews, there were no differences in logic and memory than they scored at the first interview, when they weren’t pregnant.
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Tags: pregnancy, pregnancy blog
I love how one study shows one thing and another finds something else. I found study results from earlier this year that says it is real, so who knows?
http://www.babycenter.com/204_-pregnancy-brain-is-real-study-says_5228085.bc
http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/absentmindedness
The second link references some older materials.
From personal experiences, I wonder if the constant fatigue affects my mental abilities, which happens even while I’m not pregnant. Some days do feel more foggy than others, and I make the dumbest mistakes. It’s annoying and laughable at the same time.