|Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to Birth| |Written
by Chris Masterjohn| |Sunday, 22 March 2009 22:29| Table of
Contents Human life begins, biologically speaking, at
conception. This is the moment at which the new organism
possesses its own unique combination of some 20,000 genes and
the moment at which it becomes capable of growth and cell
division. The days and weeks following conception form a
critical window within which the nutritional environment of the
womb sets the tempo for fetal growth. But nothing more clearly
illustrates the continuity between the new life within the womb
and the adult he or she will become than the fact that the
quality of nutrition during these nine months produces lifelong
effects on the brain, kidneys, and the cardiovascular system;
determines the risk of degenerative disease; and profoundly
influences the quality of life that persists through adulthood
and into old age. Every human cell within a given human being
has an identical set of genes, called a genome. Thes