{"id":6279,"date":"2024-05-16T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T18:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=6279"},"modified":"2024-05-16T18:23:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T18:23:21","slug":"scientists-calculated-the-energy-needed-to-carry-a-baby-shocker-its-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=6279","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Calculated the Energy Needed to Carry a Baby. Shocker: It\u2019s a Lot."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In humans, the energetic cost of pregnancy is about 50,000 dietary calories \u2014 far higher than previously believed, a new study found.<\/p>\n

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It takes a lot of energy to grow a baby \u2014 just ask anyone who has been pregnant. But scientists are only now discovering just how much.<\/p>\n

In a study<\/a> published on Thursday in the journal Science, Australian researchers estimated that a human pregnancy demands almost 50,000 dietary calories over the course of nine months. That\u2019s the equivalent of about 50 pints of Ben and Jerry\u2019s Cherry Garcia ice cream, and significantly more than the researchers expected.<\/p>\n

Previous estimates were lower because scientists generally assumed that most of the energy involved in reproduction wound up stored in the fetus, which is relatively small.<\/p>\n

But Dustin Marshall, an evolutionary biologist at Monash University, and his students have discovered<\/a> that the energy stored in a human baby\u2019s tissues accounts for only about 4 percent of the total energy costs of pregnancy. The other 96 percent is extra fuel required by a woman\u2019s own body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe baby itself becomes a rounding error,\u201d Dr. Marshall said. \u201cIt took us a while to wrap our heads around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This discovery emerged from Dr. Marshall\u2019s long-running research on metabolism. Different species have to meet different demands for energy. Warm-blooded mammals, for example, can maintain a steady body temperature and stay active even when the temperature drops.<\/p>\n

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In humans, the energetic cost of pregnancy is about 50,000 dietary calories \u2014 far higher than previously believed, a new study found.It takes a lot of energy to grow a baby \u2014 just ask anyone who has been pregnant. But scientists are only now discovering just how much.In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, Australian researchers estimated that a human pregnancy demands almost 50,000 dietary calories over the course of nine months. That\u2019s the equivalent of about 50 pints of Ben and Jerry\u2019s Cherry Garcia ice cream, and significantly more than the researchers expected.Previous estimates were lower because scientists generally assumed that most of the energy involved in reproduction wound up stored in the fetus, which is relatively small.But Dustin Marshall, an evolutionary biologist at Monash University, and his students have discovered that the energy stored in a human baby\u2019s tissues accounts for only about 4 percent of the total energy costs of pregnancy. The other 96 percent is extra fuel required by a woman\u2019s own body.\u201cThe baby itself becomes a rounding error,\u201d Dr. Marshall said. \u201cIt took us a while to wrap our heads around that.\u201dThis discovery emerged from Dr. Marshall\u2019s long-running research on metabolism. Different species have to meet different demands for energy. Warm-blooded mammals, for example, can maintain a steady body temperature and stay active even when the temperature drops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6281,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6282,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions\/6282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}