PRESUMPTIVE SYMPTOMS OF PREGNANCY
AND STRESS
By Renato COCCHI, MD, Neurologist and medical psychologist
Key
words: Pregnancy, presumptive symptoms, non-specific symptoms, stress,
eterologous graft, habituation.
Presumptive symptoms of
pregnancy are the symptoms already grouped under the name of the 1st
trimester's gestosis. The more important of them are drooling and excessive
vomit (hyperemesis gravidarum).
A fair comprehensive list
of these symptoms counts nausea, morning vomit, greediness for some foods
already liked and vice versa, intolerance for some smelling, dizziness,
sleepiness, drooling, facial or dental neuralgia and so on.
They are completely non
specific of the pregnancy and the words "presumptive symptoms"
testify for this lack of specificity.
These symptoms can be found
in other states where stress plays an evident role Eg. as side-effects of
anticancer chemotherapies. So, we can admit that they are symptoms of stress reactions
also in pregnancy, being the stress elicited in the woman's body by the
extraneous male chromosomal contribution to the fecundated ovum.
Since they do not appear
immediately after fecundation, we can think that the male chromosomal
contribution needs to gain a "critical mass" to elicit them. After
many cellular mitoses it can make this mass up. In our case, stress is an
internal metabolic stress, as it happens in all individuals with viable genetic
or chromosomal anomalies. Many symptoms they present are symptoms of reactions
to stress (see in this congress:
1.Cocchi R. The special
role of glutamine as an antistress agent and cell-mediated immunity fuel.
2.Cocchi R.: Bruxism and other stress symptoms in children or young adults with
autism or other PDDs, with or without Down's syndrome.)
Of course, it is the
homeostasis' alteration that produces non specific symptoms of stress
reactions.
Reactions to stress are
quite individually set and depend on genetic, and acquired factors like
hippocampus-suprarenals feedback's alterations and aging. If we consider these
setting distributed with a Gaussian probability density function, we have to
find both reduced and exaggerated reactions to stress, as the two tails.
As for our topic, we should
have to find pregnant women with poor 1st trimester gestosis and pregnant women
where this kind of gestosis lasts over the 1st trimester, even the whole time
of the pregnancy. This is exactly what usually runs.
These symptoms usually
disappear after the 1st trimester. So we can suppose that the woman's body
needs about a time like this to produce bio-humoral compounds (proteins?) for
fully accepting this heterologous but physiological "graft."
This theoretical
speculation is only a suggestion to carefully investigate such mechanisms also
for a better management of risks of rejecting after graft surgery.
Presented at the 3rd World Congress on Stress, Dublin 24-27 September 2000
Author's address: dr Renato Cocchi, via
Rabbeno, 3
42100 Reggio Emilia (Italy)
renatococchi@libero.it