On many occasions we have explained the negative consequences that tobacco has on the fetus and that it also causes problems in the baby after birth. A new study joins these investigations and considers that sudden death can be a matter of awakening, and this ability to wake up is considered diminished in cases of smoking mothers. Let's see the reasons for this theory.
The study has been published in the specialized magazine Sleep Recently. The basic hypothesis was to investigate the factors that can cause the weakening of the process of waking from sleep considering that this process may be involved in the causes of sudden death syndrome childish.
They start from an idea: the ease of waking up on certain occasions can be a protective mechanism that would cause a complete awakening and this protective mechanism would fail in the victims of sudden death. They compare the awakening patterns of healthy and full-term children of both smoking mothers and others who were not.
Children of non-smoking mothers woke up more easily and their data on the encephalogram showed an active response from their brain when the stimulus was modified, this being a small variation of a slight air flow.
For these reasons, they considered that smoking during pregnancy would cause dysfunction in the protective mechanism of nighttime awakening when the air flow is incorrect and that could be the cause of the highest incidence of sudden death observed in the children of smoking mothers.
When we talk about sudden death we all become alert, especially since the determining cause of this terrible problem remains unknown, and possibly multicausal. However, the baby's ability to wake up seems to be, according to the authors of this very recent work, one of the protective factors. My personal opinion is that scientific studies should deepen this important issue that I feel crucial.
Unfortunately we have no data on sudden death in all cultures and we do not know if it exists in cases where a baby is being cradled in the arms during sleep. I don't know if there are cases of mothers who carry their baby asleep on them while they are moving and he dies in the meantime due to sudden death. I assure you that I am still looking for information about it, it seems important to me. There is no data on this.
Be that as it may, no doubt, smoking during pregnancy increases the sudden death rates and is a measure of protection for the baby that, for this and many other reasons, mothers should seek by all possible means.
