Crying and cortisol

I think I miss my time at the University... I rather enjoy reading research on babies and the current theories re raising them

Anyway, I've heard it bandied around that letting babies cry it out increases cortisol levels, which in turn harms their developing little brains. I also just read the 'Politically Incorrect Parenting' book, where Nigel Latta basically says that that's not really the case, it's often quoted by people who've done 'internet research', but he's read the actual studies to reach his conclusion.

Anyone ever looked into this? I'm going to have a nosy, but if anyone has any research to share, I'd like to read it As with anything, it's the starting that's hard, I've got to find some relevant studies before I can follow citations.

I'd be interested too tbh! I don't 'believe' in crying it out at all as I wouldn't like to be left to cry it out myself but there have been times when DD has had a huge tantrum over something and just cried and cried and nothing will stop her and I always feel stink but she just needs to let it out iygwim! But I had heard both 'stories'.

The stuff I've read says you're dammed if you're do and dammed if you don't. Overtiredness and lack of sleep is a huge contributor to cortisol levels as well, in both parents and babies. Personaly for me sleep deprivation triggers depression and bubs is heaps happier since getting good sleep habits.

Sleepstore as a medical research paper link that looks at 50 ish studies of different sleep methods, the phsyslogical (sp) effect and the dangers of interpreted sleep on both kids and parents. Basically I think it concludes that there was no real problem with any sleep training method.

Well, I only had a quick look yesterday, but I found two interesting studies that weren't related to crying, but looked at cortisol levels. The first was measuring prenatal cortisol levels in women - the conclusion was that women who have higher levels (i.e. are more stressed) in the last trimester tended to have 'fussier' babies. The effects leveled out after a few months, but a good reason to relax while pregnant!!!! (It was a smallish sample size, but looked good in other aspects). Kind of logical, but I was surprised it did make a significant difference.
The second looked at newborn babies production of cortisol - I only had a fleeting read over the study, and have to admit that some of the terms I was reading were a little over my head, if I was serious I'd have to do more research in the area. But the basic summary seemed to be that babies who produce high levels of cortisol in response to negative stimuli tended to be more balanced and chilled at six months - their bodies were better at responding to their environment (and the 'ooh, bad things are happening, lets make cortisol' response was an early indication that they were good at that).

None of that's relevant to the topic at hand, though, but I gave up looking because I've got a reeeaaaaally slow donosaur of a computer at the moment and it didn't handle the databases well, I'm going to look again when I get my laptop back later in the week.

ETA that the book did mostly deal with older kids, caliandjack, but in this section he was discussing baby sleep patterns, I think the baby in his example was six months old.

ETAA - I'll check out that Sleep Store stuff, sounds good And thanks for the link to the Brainwave trust, my computer had a hernia with their website but I'll check it out later.

Edited by Hopes

There has been quite a bit of work done by the Liggins Institute at Auckland Medical School using sheep as models for human babies - lots of IUGR stuff, but also some cortisol stuff. Obviously it wasn't specifically CIO (ever tried to make a lamb CIO? ) but it was more about the consequences of elevated cortisol on the developing body/ brain.

Ha, ha - I think my brother's neighbour did make a lamb CIO, didn't make for good neighbour relations.