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AniRed's avatar

During my first pregnancy, I experienced significant nausea and an aversion to coffee, despite previously enjoying it which I still do.

Interesting to note the connection that the baby who is now 21 avoids coffee, as it consistently makes him feel unwell!

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Chris Masterjohn, PhD's avatar

That's very interesting. Possible he was excreting a metabolic byproduct making you ill. There's a case report of a family that had two babies homozygous for a metabolic defect in branched-chain amino acid metabolism. The mother had four babies, two heterozygous and two homozygous. She got horribly ill eating protein when pregnant with the two homozygous babies, but not at all when pregnant with the two heterozygous babies. Likely mechanism is the babies were excreting toxic intermediates from the protein that crossed the placenta back to the mother, or perhaps the placenta itself as the major secretor of GDF15 was secreting it in response to its own poor attempt to metabolize the BCAAs. I imagine something similar with the coffee though I'm not sure what it would have been as it could be caffeine or one of the numerous organic acids etc.

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JenP's avatar

I've also observed very close responses in my children to pregnancy aversions and difficulties.

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Savannah's avatar

I recognize much of this from my bio opt report. It means the world to me to have something to work on that may allow me to have a pregnancy that doesn't obliterate my health.

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Chris Masterjohn, PhD's avatar

Yes this research was done for you and now can help other people too! Really hope next time is a total turnaround!

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Karen Rosss's avatar

Wow! What an incredible article! I wish I could understand it! I am now 60 years old, and with each of my pregnancies the puking didn't stop. I basically threw up every time I moved until I delivered the baby, And it was worse with each subsequent pregnancy, totaling three babies. The only thing that helped was not moving and I really didn't have any other good tools to even try. Didn't know about Ginger, didn't take anything else. Due to stress of trauma, I developed extreme chronic fatigue about the time my first child was about 16 and my last child was about six years old. I was impaired for 15 years and started to climb my way out through naturopathic medicine and supplements. I share all this in case it's useful. Sure wish I had resources like you back then!

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Saskia's avatar

What would be your advice for someone who is in early stages of pregnancy and has pyrrole disorder (currently I supplement with 300mg magnesium, 50mg P5P, methylfolate and B12), and have severely low iron and ferritin despite a super good organic diet. I weigh 56kg and had bad anemia with boy pregnancies, preeclampsia in labour with my first son and preeclampsia from 12 weeks with my 2nd son. Not sure what to supplement this time to avoid the above. Thank you so much, S :)

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Anna B's avatar

This article caught my attention more than most bc I am 21 weeks into my 4th pregnancy (two full term, one miscarriage) and have experienced debilitating hyperemesis. In my first pregnancy, I noticed an intolerance to high histamine foods—I would vomit them every time; same aversion in subsequent pregnancies. Other intolerances included eggs and raw vegetables. My migraines also get significantly worse in pregnancy. I have never found ginger or b6 to be helpful.

Experiencing these extreme symptoms for weeks on end makes the idea of more children a difficult one to entertain. I spent the last 4 months in bed, on 4 different meds to keep my symptoms “manageable”. Two healthy children and now making it to 21 weeks with this one feels like a miracle from God!

Thank you for putting your mind and efforts into this condition, I have much to educate myself on after reading this article.

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Jennifer Bruce's avatar

During my pregnancy years ago with my Son who is now a teen, I started to feel nauseous during week 7 of my pregnancy with him. I felt sick all the time, 24/7 but would dry heave if I smelt or looked at meat. The only meat I could tolerate was ground beef in spaghetti but I could not see the raw meat. Chicken, which I ate probably 3-4 times a week before being pregnant caused the worst aversion. To this day I have wondered about feeling like this my entire pregnancy from 7 weeks on until the day he was born. Sadly, he has mild autistic symptoms and a mild intellectual disability. I often wonder about him having mild PKU but can't find a way to test him. They say he was likely tested at birth so no need. Could my aversion to meat be a sign that I should not have been eating it? I have to wonder. Great post.

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Anita Robinson's avatar

Eating helped quell nausea somewhat. 60 plus years ago, I was given a drug for nausea. Now wish I hadn't taken it. The drug in question made me hyperactive somewhat (I was a high-school teacher). The child had problems with hyperactivity until adolescence.

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Per's avatar

Sarah Pope of The Healthy Home Economist drank a lot of organic, all natural, unpasteurized, non-homogenized, i.e. RAW, cow milk during her third pragnancy. This totally stopped her usual nausea during the first trimester. She ascribes this positive effect to the highly bioavailable vitamin B6 in RAW milk. To only supplement with vitamin B6 did not help her nearly as well.

The RAW milk also made her third child delivery a comfortable and even enjoyable experience. This effect she ascribes to the great load in RAW milk of highly bioavailable calcium. The calcium in RAW milk is this bioavailable thanks to the milk enzyme that helps the body to absorb the calcium. In conventional, unnatural, pasteurized milk, this enzyme is killed off with heat, and consequently the body will not know what to do with the calcium.

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Sharla May's avatar

Hello. Great question, Chris. I am a woman, 72 yrs of age. I give birth to my only child when I was 18. The nausea/vomiting was unrelenting, literally until the day I give birth, 10 days past due date,

to a very skinny, 5lb boy. The experience was so devastating to me that I never dared a repeat. I was a little chubby at the start of the pregnancy, luckily since I lost over 30 pounds and continued losing weight after delivery for well over a year. NOTHING the doctor tried helped. For one thing, since I couldn't keep any pills down, they weren't helpful. I finally gave up and began to drink large amounts of Nesbitts cream soda, in the glass bottles. I did this because it was the only thing that didn't taste too bad coming back up. I could smell EVERYTHING, even water and old paint on the walls. I was told of a great Aunt who experienced the same thing and only had 1 child because of it.

My son was born healthy (though skinny) and remains so to this day. This was in 1971. Since then I have known of 1 other woman who suffered the way I did, but nowadays, the doctors don't wait to

hospitalize a woman and put her on an IV of nutrients, etc. This woman was in and out of the hospital for much of her pregnancy. I will never know how I managed to avoid dehydration and terrible consequences for my child. Good thing I was slightly overweight to start with. Otherwise I doubt the pregnancy would have made it to full term. Your article above is very interesting. I'm interested to learn all I can about Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Terrible thing to endure.

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Intellect's avatar

I’m 62. I lost 4 babies at the same time - at the end of 3 months. I was so sick from throwing up that I had to be hospitalized. With my last baby my Doctor said I would need to gain at least 8-10 pounds over night. He said my labs revealed a person dying. I weighed 82 pounds. He sent a priest to pray with me. My Dr. said I would most likely die trying to hold onto my baby. I did survive but it took a long time to recover. I’ve always wondered why I lost those babies until I read your article. I hope that younger Mother’s that have children are given more information and support. Thank you for all your information.

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Penny North's avatar

Hugs.

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Rebecca Campbell's avatar

Isn't it likely that this has lasting effects on the mothers health beyond pregnancy and maybe forever?

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Kelly's avatar

There isnt any mention of using progesterone as a way to help alleviate nausea and vomiting. This was given to me as a suppository during my first pregnancy and it helped greatly.

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Tracey Holekamp's avatar

Chris- love what you do and I’ve been following you forever. Do you think it’s possible that some of this could apply to Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome? My daughter has autism and has suffered from CVS for 20 years. I’ve tried so many approaches but NOTHING works for people with this condition. We have Zofran and Rizatriptan at home as needed but still many times a year she ends up in the ER on IV fluids and antiemetics. Have you looked into CVS at all? Something has to be the answer! Thanks, Heidi’s mom ❤️

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Chris Masterjohn, PhD's avatar

Yes, this is likely the basis of all vomiting that isn't driven by local accumulation of histamine, serotonin, etc, in the gut. For example if you eat histamine-loaded salmon and wind up with scombroid poisoning you have a direct action of histamine on receptors responsible for vomiting. But if you get food poisoning from staphylococcus A toxin you are dealing with a toxicity that is doing what toxicity does as outlined in this article. And if you have a chronic issue then it is almost certainly a metabolic deficiency/toxicity here unless it's something like chronic infection of the gut or tumor in the gut producing massive serotonin or some gain of function in serotonin synthesis or HT3/4 receptor in gut, which I think are going to be very rare compared to what I described here.

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Tracey Holekamp's avatar

Thank you for the input. I’ve seen the research that true CVS is connected to the mitochondrial dysfunction. She’s never had food poisoning and no tumors, infection, etc.

Can you make any suggestions that might be helpful- I am a Holistic Healthcare Practitioner myself and have exhausted all my knowledge at this point. Thanks! Tracey

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Penny North's avatar

I’ve had CVS four times.

Two with gastroenteritis (required ER visit and fluids)(Zofran does nothing, but Phenergen helps),

and twice with Macrobid. The last two, nothing came out, just non stop dry heaves every 10-15 seconds for about 3 hours.

I agree with the toxin aspect here. I believe I am a slow metabolizer of meds, and the timed-released build up in my system.

CBD oil calmed my nervous system down enough that the Macrobid induced CVS finally stopped.

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Nikki's avatar

My daughter has had hyperemesis for her first pregnancy and now her second. We have heard of the root cause being mitochondrial dysfunction but are at a loss as to what to do. No one in health care where we live has a clue. We are doing our best to treat it naturally but she ends up bedridden for months on end. Gravol is the only thing that keeps her from vomiting but we hate using meds.

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christopher andersen's avatar

Hi! Great article. My wife has severe pregnancy nausea (HG). She had 8 extremely hard months last time, now, in the 7 week of pregnancy, she is there once again. She is prescribed a recently Approved drug for it here in Norway. A little hesitant using it.

What can she do for this? HG runs in here family, both here mum ++ have experienced it.

Thanks and best regards

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Leann McCarthy's avatar

My daughter in law was VERY sick for months during pregnancy. She ended up having a baby with a mild case of PKU. Curious if anyone knows much about this? My son has a single classic copy of PKU and my daughter in law has a single mild PKU gene…Anyway, just trying to help out with the nausea of her next pregnancy. Thank you so much with any assistance or information with this subject.

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