![]() This was a follow-up alert after the UK Food Standards Authority (FSA) issued repeated warnings in 20 following the dictation of high levels of lead and arsenic in calabash chalk intended for ingestion and “detoxing therapies” sold by a number of online retailers (Food Standards Agency., 2012). In 2013, Public Health England (PHE) published a press statement and directive to General Practitioner doctors (GPs), Directors of Public Health and other relevant staff to dissuade pregnant women from Asian and African communities from ingesting a potentially poisonous product known as calabash chalk (Public Health England., 2013). The use of culturally sensitive Public health interventions which consider a community approach, while attempting to integrate these two knowledge systems through further research is likely to bear more fruits. Furthermore, within such a top down framework, opportunities to integrate biomedical science and indigenous knowledge systems are potentially missed. ![]() However, Public Health practitioners' top down approach and response which considers the practice as “dangerous” and potentially harmful to the health of the woman and unborn child with midwives and General Practitioner doctors called upon to discourage it, risks alienating the target population. Reasons for clay ingestion include curbing morning sickness, nausea, satisfying cravings, “mineral deficiency” and other life sustaining beliefs. Findings from this qualitative audit conducted in a North London Borough among Black African women show that clay ingestion during pregnancy is a cultural phenomenon embedded in indigenous knowledge (IK). Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter and on Facebook. You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter microbelover. It follows on the heels of her new book, "Craving Earth: Understanding Pica - the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk" (Columbia University Press, March 2011). The study was published June 1 in the journal The Quarterly Review of Biology. The drug's manufacturers stopped using the clay in the medicine because of contamination issues with lead. That isn't actually a new idea: Clay has been used as a stomach soother, including in the antidiarrheal medicine Kaopectate, whose name comes from the clay kaolinite. It has also been shown that it can help increase nutrient absorption, which is important during early pregnancy and the childhood years for growth. In studies on rabbits and rats, researchers found that clay in the intestines can act as a barrier, stopping the entrance of viruses and bacteria. "It was occurring where the pathogen density was higher, in warm, moist climates." "We found that it was pregnant women and young children who are eating clay, those who are the most vulnerable to infectious diseases," Young said. ![]() (Microscope images provided by Evelyne Delbos of the Macaulay Institute.) (Image credit: Sera Young and Annual Review of Nutrition, 2010) Geophagic earth may protect against toxins and pathogens by (a) strengthening the stomach lining, thereby reducing the permeability of the gut wall, and (b) binding to toxins and pathogens and rendering them unabsorbable. What they found enabled them to rule out several of the other hypotheses and provided evidence for clay as an important protective factor. In 11 counties in southern Mississippi, USA, about 38 percent of low income pregnant women at a clinic had cravings for dirt. At several sites in the US, the prevalence of any pica (including ice, starch, ash or dirt) varies between 20 and 40 percent.In drier places, like Denmark, a nationally representative sample showed about 0.01 percent prevalence in pregnant women.In Tanzania and other areas of Africa rates of dirt eating have been reported anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of pregnant or recently pregnant women.Here are some from different studies around the world, though often women are hesitant to admit their desire to eat dirt and the results are complicated by trimester: They entered each of these accounts into a database and searched for similarities between the examples. To test out these theories, the researchers analyzed historical and anthropological literature for accounts of geophagy from around the world. A third theory is that the clay helps form a protective barrier in the stomach and is a way to clean out the digestive tract. Researchers have hypothesized that it could also be linked to malnutrition and anemia, though patients taking iron and mineral supplements don't report decreased dirt cravings.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |