Women's body clocks could hold the key to preventing premature births, according to new research. Maternal circadian rhythms govern the unborn baby's biological clock - before it starts ticking on its own.
It suggests female shift workers - such as nurses and flight attendants who work on long-distance routes - could be most prone to pregnancy complications. The suprachiasmatic nucleus - SCN for short - makes everything in the body run on time.
It lies in the hippocampus - the memory centre of the brain - and regulates sleep, hunger, hormone levels, body temperature, cell cycles and more. But experiments on rats found while the foetal clock develops, it is mum's behaviour that 'tells the time.'
