Dr. Sucheta Malhotra

Smoking during pregnancy can adversely affect not only your health but that of your unborn too. Kicking this habit can help you to have a safer pregnancy as well as a healthier baby. If not, it can lead to a number of serious pregnancy complications including the death of your baby. According to various findings, smoking during this period can double your prospects of having a baby with low birth weight as well as your chance for stillbirth.

What happens when you smoke while pregnant?

The cigarette smoke is made up of about 4000 chemicals, which includes about 60 cancer causing substances, lead, and cyanide. Of these toxins in cigarette smoke, carbon monoxide and nicotine are the two toxins that make up much of smoking-related pregnancy complication. The toxins go directly to your baby through the bloodstream, the only source of nutrients and oxygen for your offspring. By working in tandem, the nicotine and carbon monoxide toxins bring about a decrease in the supply of oxygen for your baby. While nicotine cuts off oxygen supply by constricting the blood vessels, the red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen also pick up carbon monoxide molecules and take them directly to your baby.

What effects does it have on your little one?

When you smoke, you put your baby on harm's way and here's what happens to your baby:

- In terms of weight, it has been revealed that while smoking one pack daily can bring about a 226 gm decrease in the baby's weight, smoking two packs every day can affect your baby's weight by about 453 gm. A stunted growth during this period can negatively affect your child later in life.

- Due to the negative effects of the toxins, the development of your baby's lung and body gets hampered. It may also make your baby prone to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SID) and asthma.

- It can also increase your baby's chance of suffering from a heart defect. Research shows that babies whose mothers smoke during the first three months of pregnancy have 20-70% chance of developing congenital heart problems compared to babies whose mothers didn't smoke.

- Smoking can affect the development of his brain functions and cause him or her to suffer from low IQ, learning disabilities as well as behavioral issues. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a Gynaecologist.

Paraphilia is a condition involving abnormal sexual desires or being aroused only by specific activities that deviate from the average interests. The arousal of people with paraphilia are bound by fantasizing about certain situations or activities that not necessarily 'normal'.

There are hundreds of recognized sexual paraphilia. A few of the most commonly known examples include:

1. Necrophilia: Involves being sexually aroused by corpses

2. Paedophilia: It is being aroused by prepubescent children

3. Narratophilia: Being aroused by obscene words.

4. Metrophilia: Being aroused by poetry

5. Masochism: Being aroused by suffering, being bound or beaten

6. Sadism: Arousal that comes with inflicting pain on others

7. Anthropophagolagnia: Involves raping and then eating the corpse of the victim

8. Coprophilia: Arousal involving faeces

9. Pictophilia: Arousal involving pornography or erotic pictures

10. Zoophilia: Involving animals

While some of these fantasies are harmless indulgences, some might be a serious threat to the person and the society. Anthropophagolagnia, for example, is one of the most dangerous examples of paraphilia. Ted Bundy, one of the most talked about cases in criminal psychology, was known to practice Anthropophagolagnia.

Some cases of paraphilia, when done with a consenting partner and indulged in discreetly, need not be especially a threat to others, for example, Metrophilia and Narratophilia. However, the likes of paedophilia, necrophilia and paraphilia involving rape fantasies are pathological in nature and can be considered abnormal and outright dangerous for the overall health and sanctity of the society.

Symptoms of paraphilia include the severe obsession with a particular fantasy or object to the point the individual is unable to attain sexual satisfaction without it.

The development of paraphilia, from a psychoanalytic perspective, is attributed to the arousal caused by a particular behaviour in childhood. From a behaviouristic perspective, sexual arousal may be attached to a particular object if both the instances have repeatedly occurred together around the concerned individual, thus conditioning them. An individual who is the victim or observer of inappropriate sexual acts may develop a paraphilia concerning that very act.

Treatment

For treatment of sexual paraphilia, drugs that regulate testosterone levels and arousal levels have been used to reduce the sexual arousal while the therapy continues. Antidepressants have been used to reduce sex drive but they do little about the fantasies. Psychoanalytic approach and hypnosis have been used in therapy. In some cases, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (a therapy which focuses on conversations regarding how one’s thoughts and beliefs can affect his/her actions) and systematic desensitization (systematically and gradually letting go of such odd fantasies) have been used to cause a reduction in the conditioning of the fantasy and sexual arousal. Prolonged therapy and medications are used largely for the treatment of paraphilia. For the ones that are a threat to the society, quarantine (separating the extreme paraphilic cases from the rest of the society) is suggested in some countries.