Eating Yams = Twins? Ever hear of this?

Not sure if anyone reads NY Magazine, but in an article the woman is told that most of the mothers of twins eat yams. Anyone ever hear of this? Here is the article, it's about the twins needing surgery to repair their cleft palettes

ny magazine article

I have heard of this. I heard that yams contain some kind of chemical that mimics a certian female hormone. I also heard that in Africa there is some village that eat a certain type of yam and they have an extremey high twin rate.

Let me find the link...

---

Posted by dawnie

I have heard of this. I heard that yams contain some kind of chemical that mimics a certian female hormone. I also heard that in Africa there is some village that eat a certain type of yam and they have an extremey high twin rate.

Let me find the link...

---

Oh yes, I want to hear all about this. Please find the link

YOU probably won't find this in the Guinness Book of Records, but it is an incontestable fact that Nigeria holds the world record for multiple births.
Many of the multiple births involve the women of the Yoruba ethnic group in the western part of Nigeria, who, with 41,6 twin births per 1 000 deliveries, have the highest number of multiple births in the world, particularly when compared with five twin births per 1 000 deliveries among European women.
So common are multiple births in western Nigeria that there is hardly any extended family in the region without at least one set of twins. Indeed, twin births seem to run in several families.
Take, for instance, the Arowosegbe family in ApakunEpe, a backwater town about 80km north of Lagos, which probably boasts the highest number of twins in Nigeria.
'All the children of my grandfather had twins,' says Yemi Arowosegbe. 'Some had more than one set of twins. In my immediate family, my father had three sets of twins. My elder sister, who is a twin, gave birth to triplets. All my father's brothers have twins in their families.'
In all, the Arowosegbe family has 13 sets of twins, a family tradition that began with their great-grandfather. Over the years, they have come to believe that any woman who marries into their family must have at least one set of twins. It is a tradition which has to date remained unbroken.
The preponderance of twins in Yorubaland dates back a long time, and it is not surprising that in the olden days the people had a specific deity dedicated to twins. Among the Yorubas, twins are believed to be imbued with supernatural powers. They are also seen as harbingers of good fortune to their families.
For a long time, the preponderance of twins and multiple births among the Yorubas was a mystery - no one really knew what was responsible for it.
The general belief was that obese women were predisposed to multiple births.
Though some medical scientists thought yams contained unusual steroids, no one seriously thought there was a correlation between the Yorubas' appetite for yams and twins.
The first attempt to find a rational explanation for the high rate of multiple births in western Nigeria took place 20 years ago, when a group of Nigerian obstetricians announced that their research findings showed that yam consumption was responsible for it. But an unsympathetic nation and its cynical scientific community pilloried their report.
At face value, it is difficult to see what yam consumption has to do with multiple births.
In December last year, however, the yam theory was revisited when another group of obstetricians drawn from Yale University School of Medicine in the US, in conjunction with their counterparts from the University of Benin in Nigeria, cited evidence once again linking the high consumption of yams - the edible roots of tropical climbing plants that are a common staple food in Nigeria and other African countries - with the high incidence of multiple births in western Nigeria.
Led by Dr K Odunsi of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Yale University School of Medicine, the study group conducted its research in two hospitals in Ile-Ife, an ancient Yoruba town about 200km north of Lagos.
Some 254 women who had given birth to twins or triplets were examined. Each mother of twins was matched by age with two mothers who had given birth to single children. Their diets and biosocial profiles were examined, as were those of their husbands. The study revealed a relationship between the number of yams eaten a week and multiple births.
Laboratory experiments performed by the study group on rats also showed that rats fed with yams had more litters than those fed other foods.
The group concluded that there could be a substance in yams that is similar to clomiphene citrate, a drug commonly used to stimulate the ovaries to produce more than one egg in women per cycle.
The next step is to isolate the substance and conduct further studies on the genetic make-up of Yoruba people to further explain the high incidence of multiple births among them.
What's puzzling is that high consumption of yams is not restricted to Yorubaland. Indeed, the Benue people in the Middle Belt region arguably eat more yams, yet their women are not known to be predisposed to twin and multiple births.
The explanation of Odunsi and his colleagues for this aberration is that there are different types of yams, and that the type of yam found in the Benue area may not contain the type of fertility substance like clomiphene citrate which is found in yams consumed in western Nigeria.
There may still be some grey areas in the yam-twin theory. But at least some progress is being made in clearing up the mystery surrounding the unusual predisposition of women in western Nigeria to give birth to twins and triplets.
Raufu is the editor of the Nigerian Tribune on Sa

On the way home from work I'll buy all the yams I can find I want twins!!!

You go Jenn!!! Hope you like yams - you'll be our proof of this theory


Very interesting article Dawnie, thanks for posting

I'm going shopping for YAMS !!!!!