Doctors have long known – and warned – that drinking and pregnancy don’t mix. Either for the mom-to-be or the developing child. But now there’s more – and more-definitive – proof of that old caveat…
The world is rife with similar versions of what we’ll call a ‘new wives tale’. Or maybe we should dial back to the softer term, ‘myth’… Nevertheless, it’s commonly claimed that, if you don’t want to get pregnant, you should drink and smoke cannabis freely…
Just wrong…
Wrong, wrong, wrong! In fact, the latest specific study of those theories paints a much different picture!
Researchers at the Society for the Study of Addiction recently reported that their new large-sample survey numbering more than 2,000 women aged 15-34 included a subgroup of 936 who said they didn’t want to get pregnant. Within that subgroup, 429 reported heavy drinking (as measured using a standard alcohol screening questionnaire) and 362 reported using cannabis (including 157 who reported daily or almost daily use).
The subgroup was followed over a period of one year to see how they fared…
What they found
Somewhat to the researchers’ surprise…
Final results showed: 71 of the 936 women who most wanted to avoid pregnancy became pregnant. More than half of those undesired pregnancies (38) occurred among those who drank heavily – more than the combined number for those who drank moderately or not at all.
In other words, heavy drinking was associated with a higher risk of undesired pregnancy compared with lower levels of drinking.
By contrast, less than half of the 71 undesired pregnancies (28) occurred among people who used cannabis, meaning that those who used cannabis did not show an elevated risk of undesired pregnancy compared with people who did not use cannabis.
The takeaway…
Study report Lead Author Dr Sarah Raifman, of the University of California, San Francisco, comments: “This study made two important findings.
First, non-pregnant women who drink heavily appear, on average, to have a higher desire to avoid pregnancy than those who drink moderately or not at all.
Second, drinking heavily as opposed to moderately or not at all appears to put those who most want to avoid pregnancy at higher risk of becoming pregnant within one year.
Finding out why those pregnancies happen is the next step in our research.”
Change the message?
“In the meantime, given the potentially life-altering effects of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (which occur when a fetus is exposed to alcohol through the mother’s drinking), and the fact that the risk of FASD increases with the amount and duration of the mother’s drinking, it’s important for doctors and clinicians to support women who drink heavily to stop drinking as soon as they suspect an unintentional pregnancy,” Raifman stressed.
My take
Makes sense. In fact, it’s a rare victory for good old common sense – for once in a long time…
But, as Raifman says, it’s also a conundrum that desperately needs sorting out!
~ Maggie J.