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Authors: Lana Asprey,David Asprey

The Better Baby Book

BOOK: The Better Baby Book
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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Copyright

Epigraph

Acknowledgments

Part One: The Better Baby Plan

Chapter 1: You Are a Cocreator: The Better Baby Plan

What Happens at Conception

Sending Your Baby Growth-Mode Messages

The Power of Epigenetics: Our DNA Is Not Set in Stone

More on Growth Mode and Defense Mode

Chapter 2: Road Map to a Healthy Pregnancy

Eat the Right Foods

Take the Right Supplements

Detoxify Your Body before, during, and after Pregnancy

Minimize Stress

Comparing Your Baby to Others

Before We Continue

Part Two: The Better Baby Diet

Chapter 3: Better Baby Building Blocks

What Bodies Are Made Of

What Brains Are Made Of

What Bodies Are Not Made Of

Chapter 4: What Not to Eat

Fried or Overcooked Food

Genetically Modified Foods

Unhealthy Fats

Sugar and Excess Carbohydrates

Chemical Flavor Enhancers

Most Grains

Yeast

Mushrooms

Pasteurized, Homogenized, or Conventional Dairy (Except Butter)

Caffeine and Decaffeinated Products

Garlic and Onions

Most Seafood

Cured and Precooked Meats

Certain Herbs

Canned Food

Old Food

Conventional Produce

Foods with Added Chemicals or Conditioners

Processed Foods

Chapter 5: Nourishing a Healthy Brain and Body

The Food Pyramid

Eggs

Coconut

Olives and Olive Oil

Meat and Butter from Grass-Fed Animals

Low-Mercury Fish

Vegetables and Low-Sugar Fruits

Nourishing Nuts

Collagen Keeps It All Together

The Only Good Soy Is Soy Lecithin

Cilantro

Ginger

White Rice

Whey Protein

Xylitol and Stevia

Dark Chocolate and Cocoa Butter

The Better Baby Book Nutrition Guidelines

Chapter 6: Fertility

L-Arginine and L-Ornithine

The Truth about Oral Contraceptives

The Importance of a Healthy Thyroid

Sickness and Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Fertility Treatment: Not Just for Women

Sex for Pregnancy

Chapter 7: Your Prenatal Supplement Regimen

How to Tell if a Supplement Is Useful and Safe

The Myth of
a
Prenatal Supplement

Multivitamins

Essential Vitamins

Essential Minerals

Probiotics

Krill or Fish Oil

Brain Nutrients

Antioxidants

Chapter 8: Hormones and Pharmaceuticals

Progesterone

Deprenyl

Oxiracetam

A Warning about Pharmaceuticals

Part Three: The Toxin Connection

Chapter 9: How Mold Changes Your Pregnancy

Toxins in Food

Types of Mycotoxins

Locations of Mycotoxins

Chapter 10: Environmental Toxins

Air Pollutants

Water Pollutants

Electromagnetic Fields

Chapter 11: Endotoxins: The Toxins Produced inside You

Chapter 12: How to Deal with Toxins

Activated Charcoal

Bentonite Clay

Chlorella

Cholestyramine

Drugs versus Supplements

Morning Sickness and Toxins

Part Four: Preparing for Pregnancy and Birth

Chapter 13: Detoxifying Your Body and Your Home

The Better Baby Diet

Heavy Metals and Chelation

Rejuvenating Your Liver

Detoxifying Your Home

Do Your Best

Chapter 14: Autism

Possible Causes of Autism

Heavy Metals

Age

Toxins

GI Tract Imbalance

Vitamin D3 Deficiency

Keep Up with the Information

Chapter 15: Reducing Stress for an Easier and Better Pregnancy

Stress and Fertility

Stress and Pregnancy

Where Does Stress Come From?

What to Do about Stress

Sleep

Exercise

Breathing Techniques (
Pranayama
)

Meditation

Heart Rate Variability Training

Dealing with Travel

Addressing Jaw Tension

Lighting

Chapter 16: Does Intention Matter?

Chapter 17: The Best Way to Welcome Baby: A Gentle Birth

A Mother's Eyes

Self-Attachment

The Umbilical Cord

Water Birth

Caesarean Section

Home Birth: At Least as Safe as Hospital Birth

The Issue of Hospital Birth

Planning Birth at Home or in the Hospital

A European Perspective on Birth

Planning a Vaginal Birth after a Caesarian

Nursing

Vaccines

Chapter 18: Bringing It All Together

Getting the Right Stuff into Your Body

Detox Your Home and Skip the Nursery

Manage Stress

For Men

Your Beautiful Better Baby

Index

To our children, Anna and Alan, and their children, and so on

Copyright © 2013 by Better Baby, LLC. All rights reserved

Cover Design: Wendy Mount
Cover Photograph: © nicolas hansen/Getty Images

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at
www.copyright.com
. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at
http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
.

The information contained in this book is not intended to serve as a replacement for professional medical advice. Any use of the information in this book is at the reader's discretion. The author and the publisher specifically disclaim any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use or application of any information contained in this book. A health care professional should be consulted regarding your specific situation.

For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit us at
www.wiley.com
.

ISBN 978-1-118-13713-0 (paper); ISBN 978-1-118-22519-6 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-23624-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-26342-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

This book contains references to research sources. Full references for the book may be found at
www.betterbabybook.com/research
.

Acknowledgments

We wrote this book because, after careful reflection, it seemed like the single best thing we could do to help the world be better. If parents learn what they can do to give their children better genes, their children will be stronger, smarter, and healthier—and then they will pass those genes on to their children. What an awesome way for a book to live on even as the printed version of these pages crumble to dust. We are grateful that we had the knowledge, education, and resources to create this program for our children. But we did not do it alone.

Gary Taubes, the author of the
New York Times
best seller
Good Calories, Bad Calories
, was kind enough to read our proposal and then introduce us to his agent, Kristine Dahl at ICM, who agreed to become our literary agent. Were it not for Gary's generosity and Kris's guidance and hard work representing us in finding a publisher, this book wouldn't have happened. Our thanks to you both, and to Laura Neely of ICM as well.

Our thanks to Andrew Clark, our researcher, who spent countless hours finding the references that we used to educate ourselves before we knew this was going to become a book. There were more than 1,300 references, to be more accurate, and Andrew formatted and posted them on our website so they will be available for everyone who has the time and desire to cull through them. His tireless attention to writing and editing was critical. This book wouldn't exist without Andrew's diligence and attention to every detail.

Ronnie Falcao, LM, MS, CPM, our homebirth midwife, shared her amazing knowledge about how birth affects baby health and wellness, and she provided gentle but insistent encouragement to write this book after she saw how transformative our program was when we used it ourselves. We are grateful that Ronnie runs gentlebirth.org, a wonderful site for parents looking to change birth into the emotional and spiritual experience it is. Barbara Findeisen, one of the world's foremost experts on pre-and perinatal psychology, also helped to shape our understanding of birth and how important it is for healthy children. Barbara can be found at starfound.org. Jan Rydfors, MD, our ob-gyn at Stanford, was amazingly open and supportive of our nontraditional approach, saying, “Whatever you're doing, keep it up. It's working!”

Our thanks to Dr. Philip Lee Miller, MD, of Los Gatos Longevity Institute (
antiaging.com
), who used bioidentical hormones and nutrition to help both of us balance our hormones for maximum health and fertility. Dr. Miller generously provided knowledge and support far beyond expectations, and it made a difference to us personally, and to the book and hopefully the parents who read it.

For nearly twenty years, world-class health and medical researchers and practitioners have been presenting their findings to the public at Silicon Valley Health Institute (
svhi.com
) meetings in Palo Alto. Dave is grateful to be president of SVHI and believes that this book would not have been possible without the knowledge he gained from more than a decade of learning with experts. In particular, Steve Fowkes, the biochemist adviser to SVHI, author of several health books, and head of
CERI.com
, played a pivotal role in the evolution of this book by sharing an almost supernatural understanding of the inner workings of human biochemistry.

Our editor at John Wiley & Sons, Thomas Miller, and assistant editor Jorge Amaral were hugely helpful in bringing the book to fruition and keeping our writing concise and on target. Beth Rashbaum, an independent editor, helped to set the tone of the book early in our process of writing.

The members of the Better Baby team—Andrew, Alexis, and Aaron—have all helped to pull this knowledge together, and we appreciate the passion they put into their work every day.

Dave wishes to thank Lana for so closely following this program while she was pregnant. The results of that effort play with him in our yard every day! Lana wishes to thank Dave for cooking all of those low-toxin, high-healthy-fat Better Baby meals, and most especially for making so much amazingly good, fertility-enhancing, homemade ice cream!

But most of all, we'd like to thank our parents, who did their best to pass great genes on to us. We in turn are doing our best to improve those genes and pass them down to our own children, and we sincerely hope they do the same with their children.

BOOK: The Better Baby Book
5.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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