Lana Hirschowitz Thursday 19 July 2012 7:56am

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by LANA HIRSCHOWITZ

I lost a lot of weight when I was pregnant. Less than ideal when you are trying to grow a human inside you but it really wasn’t something that I had planned (or even wanted) . I didn’t lose all this weight because I ate only fresh fruit and pluses, no I ate hot chips and pasta – but I vomited all the time.

And when I say all the time I mean it. Every meal was wasted and every trip to the shops was fraught with the danger that I would not get to the bathroom fast enough. Work was a joke. As was sleep.

It wasn’t morning sickness. It was all day, all night sickness and it was brutal.

I tried ginger, I tried eating dry crackers in bed, I tried a seasickness wristband and I even tried acupuncture. But I never, ever tried suggesting to my husband that I give him a blowjob.

That’s because this scintillating study had not yet seen the light of day.

Gordon Gallup, a psychologist with a particular interest in evolution and human behaviour and  human reproductive competition in Albany (and yes, he’s a man) has come up with the theory that morning sickness is in fact a response to the body’s immune system reacting to the unknown DNA growing inside it.

Looking into the reasons behind nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy, Gallup puts up the idea that semen is in fact what causes morning sickness.

A report in Slate explains:

“Because half of the DNA the fetus is carrying comes from the father, the mother’s body may initially treat the organism as foreign tissue or an infection. This response, Gallup says, triggers an immune reaction that is commonly experienced as nausea, vomiting, and malaise (aka morning sickness). The best cure for this type of sickness, says Gallup, is, strangely enough, the same thing as its cause.

The more exposure a woman has to her partner’s semen—that is to say, the more often she’s inseminated prior to conception and during the early stages of the pregnancy—the more tolerance her body develops to his genetic material. This tolerance generalizes to a tolerance for the fetus and leads to successful maternal immunosuppression—and subsequently allows her to feel less like an infected zombie with serious stomach troubles.”

Well okay then. On reflection I am quite glad that I never read that during pregnancy although I am sure my husband isn’t.

It is worth noting that this theory is new—so new that it hasn’t been put to a test yet. You may or may not want to test it yourself.

But if you do in fact want to read some morning sickness remedies that may in fact work and don’t involve swallowing or being exposed to any more semen click here.

Have you ever been conned into doing something because it was meant to be “good for you”?