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Her supervisor, Cancer Prevention Research Program Coordinator Diane Powers, says that while Crystal's work is not directly related to cancer, it is important to the Center. "Understanding the determinants of dietary behavior clearly helps public health and cancer prevention scientists to design better interventions aimed at helping people change their dietary habits," Powers says. Crystal divides her time between the University of Washington and the Center, where she coordinates the Jewish Women's Breast Cancer Risk Counseling Study in Public Health Sciences. She conducted her award-winning research at the UW, where she is pursuing a doctorate in physiological psychology, working with psychology professor Ilene Bernstein. The project was inspired by an earlier study indicating that the offspring of rats fed a diuretic during pregnancy showed a strong preference for salty tastes. Her research looked for a similar link in humans and found that the children of the approximately 10 percent of women who experience moderate to severe early pregnancy sickness show an enhanced preference for salty-tasting foods. Research with both infants and adults tends to confirm these findings, Crystal says. The study tracked adults' preferences for certain salty snack foods as well as overall salt intake, and found both higher in those whose mothers had experienced moderate to severe vomiting during early pregnancy. Infants in the study were fed salt solutions above and below the salt levels normally occurring in the body, and researchers monitored both their facial expressions during feeding and their intake of the solutions. The study found no link between women's salt intake prior to or during pregnancy and the severity of their early pregnancy sickness. "Now my challenge is finding a population of pregnant women" to take the study to its next logical step, Crystal says. The earlier animal research suggests that the preference for salty tastes may be linked to extracellular fluid depletion, or dehydration, in the mother. Crystal's research so far has not looked into whether early pregnancy sickness causes such dehydration, but she's hoping to address that in a future study. A link between maternal dehydration and salt preference could have significant impact on prenatal care, especially when it comes to monitoring and treating dehydration. "Right now, pregnant women aren't really counseled on hydration," Crystal says, except for 1 percent or so who suffer extreme vomiting and fluid depletion. "Most pregnant women don't seek medical care if they're vomiting." But if research shows a direct connection between maternal dehydration and salt preference, the next step would be to look at ways to reverse the dehydration by replacing lost fluids and electrolytes. "All people have a hard time reducing their salt intake," Crystal says. "However, for most people, having high salt intake is not a problem. For the 5 percent of the population that is hypertensive, high salt exacerbates their condition. "If we are able to identify people at risk, we could start early enough to change their preferences. This puts a whole new twist on the idea of innate preferences." Crystal doesn't know what her next move will be after completing her dissertation, but it undoubtedly will involve women's health. "I've always been interested in women's health, and I love research," she says. "This is a very exciting field right now." | ||||||
