A team of Japanese researchers has discovered this mechanism through animal testing: if a pregnant woman suffers from malnutrition due to excessive dieting or family difficulties, her baby’s brain blood pressure regulation system will be imbalanced, and the baby will be at risk of developing high blood pressure when she grows up. The research team pointed out that pregnant women should pay attention to their diet during pregnancy. In late pregnancy, stress hormones increase. Malnourished pregnant women are unable to break down through the placenta, resulting in the transfer of stress hormones to the fetus. Babies are born and grow up prone to high blood pressure. Although the amount of hormones decreases as the baby grows up, the child is still susceptible to high blood pressure when he or she grows up. Toshiro Fujita, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, and others divided mice in pregnancy into two groups, normal and low-nutrition, and compared the pups. The results found that the pups conceived by the low-nutrition white mice had a light birth weight and were prone to become obese as they grew up, and that the pups’ blood pressure rose sharply if their food was high in salt. Examining the brain cells of the pups, the team found that the blood pressure regulation system of the low-weight pups was imbalanced, and genes for increased blood pressure could easily come into play. Once the system was out of balance in the fetus, the problem persisted even as they grew to maturity. The team confirmed that stress hormones are transferred from malnourished mothers to fetuses, leading to an imbalance in the blood pressure regulation system, by conducting additional tests. A good mother can determine not only her child’s IQ, but also her child’s body!