The gray area between Science and Pseudoscience : Pregenancy Edition

I read The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant by Jean M. Twenge PhD and Pregnancy Notes by Rujuta Diwekar this week.

Pregnancy Notes, by "India's top health expert", is a book that talks about before, during and after pregnancy. Mostly, the book deals with diet before pregnancy, during each of the trimesters and after delivery. One of the recurring themes in the book is the need unearth Indian recipes and customs meant for pregnant women that are commonly practiced in various parts of the country. The author talks about how western science is catching up to the benefits of food items that are part of various traditional Indian cuisines. I broadly agree with the sentiment because I have seen the impactful work that People's Archive of Rural India does. The problem is that the author goes further and flirts with pseudo science. For example,

The moon represents the water element in our body and if you follow the moon closely, you would notice fluctuation in your appetite based on its size. ("A Note on Appetite" on page 69)

What really put me off the book was "Special Note: Pregnancy and the Upanishads" on Page 49.

A baby is conceived within the space that exists inside the mother, and space has the quality of sound. So mothers can hear their baby within weeks of the pregnancy, ...

In comparison, "The Impatient Woman's Guide" was written by a Professor of Psychology after extensively researching scientific papers on the topic of getting pregnant. On top of that, the book author contacted the authors of relevant research papers to perform additional analyses and presented them in the book. The book is extremely thorough in ensuring that everything they are recommending is based on scientific fact. There is only one short discussion on god or faith or religion in "Consider faith and spirituality" on page 147. The author says

Faith can be a safe refuge during many times in life, but it is especially helpful when facing difficult, uncontrollabe circumstances - and strugglying to get pregnant certainly qualifies.

It does feel like the author is referring to monotheistic religions and not polytheism in that section of the book. But I fully agree with the author that Faith and Spirituality can provide answers to questions that people might have in trying circumstances.

Overall, I highly recommend "The Impatient Woman's Guide" to any couple who is planning to get pregnant, especially if they want to understand why they are being told to eat certain things, take certain mediciness and do certain things to aid conception. My wife wasn't happy when I gifted her the book but as we started reading it, she fell in love with it, and now wholeheartedly recommends it.

Coming to "Pregnancy Notes", if I could rip out the sections that flirt with pseudoscience, it becomes a solid recommendation. Mainly because of the books' emphasis on the importance of local knowledge on dietary constraints for pregnant women. But what do I know? Maybe the author will eventually be proved right and what is now considered pseudoscience will become established science in the future. But, until that time comes, the author should have acknowledged the fact that some of what she is recommending is a way of living and not established scientific fact. I wish the author distinguished recommendations based on scientific fact from those based on a traditional Indian way of living. For example, I actually love the following from

The view of the scriptures (Upanishads) is that education is incomplete without understanding all aspects of anna (Food), and without it progeny cannot grow, success remains elusive, and life itself becomes a burden. (Page 23)

I wholeheartedly agree with the author here. I look at my wife and see how comfortable she is with the food she eats, cooking food that she wants and understanding how her body is reacting to new foods. In comparison, I can't cook even if my life depended on it. I don't understand how my body reacts to food that I eat and most of the time, I don't know what I am eating. Only in the past two years have I started paying attention to these things. And only after I started paying attention did I fully understand the value in understanding food. This wasn't part of what I was taught, at home or at school, when I grew up and I suspect the same is true for most people of my age (and younger) who grew up in English-medium schools. Traditional Indian knowledge and values have immense value to the people of my generation (and younger generations) but we need to start separating the Traditional Indian way of living from the Traditional Indian Pseudoscience.