Pregnant? You must take folic acid

During my first pregnancy, I remember taking that initial scan. My husband and I were shown this tiny little thing on the monitor and told that it was our baby.

The grins on our faces soon turned into frowns when the doctor explained that the baby’s heartbeat wasn’t as strong as it should be, and that I should take extra care during the early stages of the pregnancy.

A few weeks later, I miscarried. It clearly wasn’t meant to be. Nevertheless, for a long time I wondered whether doing things differently in terms of diet and lifestyle could have prevented the miscarriage.

After much soul searching, the answer was no. I had been eating well, avoiding the main anti-nutrients (smoking, alcohol and caffeine), as well as the known foods that cause problems (these include pâté or any products containing liver; soft, mould-ripened cheeses; raw or partly cooked meat, fish and poultry; raw and lightly cooked eggs).

At the time, I was also taking a multivitamin designed for pregnant women – and it is the importance of this that I’d like to talk about today.

With modern refining processes and intensive farming practices, food these days simply isn’t as nutrient-dense as it once was. Soils aren’t as mineral-rich, and most commercial growers tend to harvest their fruit and vegetables long before they ripen - when produce is picked too early, it doesn’t get a chance to absorb sufficient nutrients from the soil.

We are also bombarded with an immense cocktail of ‘anti-nutrients’, from car pollution to the pesticides found on your food.

DECREASING RISKS

These are things that our great-grandmothers’ generation didn’t have to worry about, and that’s why I recommend a prenatal multivitamin for all pregnant women. And of all the nutrients in that little pill, folic acid is by far the most important.

There is now conclusive evidence to show that a lack of vitamin B9, or folate, in the mother’s diet can lead to neural tube defects (NTD) in infants.

Researchers found that women who included folic acid (the synthetic form) in their diet prior to conception and during the early stages of pregnancy, had a 15 to 50 percent reduced risk of NTDs in their children.

NTDs are caused when a foetus’ spine fails to close properly during the early stages of pregnancy.

The most common form of NTD is spina bifida, which can cause limited to severe impairment of cognitive and motor skills. The most severe form of NTD is anecephaly, where neither the brain nor the skull form fully.

Folic acid is also effective in preventing another widespread birth defect: cleft lips and palates.

Like NTDs, cleft lips and cleft palates occur during the early stages of pregnancy - the first 10 weeks - when a foetus’ lips or the hard palette of the mouth does not close properly, leaving a crevasse. One Norwegian study showed that when expectant mothers took 400 micrograms (mcg) or more of folic acid prior to conception and during the early stages of pregnancy, it decreased the risk of their child having a cleft lip or palate by 40 percent.

The recommended intake for folic acid is 400mcg per day, so I’d urge you to take this supplement as an insurance policy. If, for whatever reason, you can’t take a supplement, ensure you’re eating at least two cups of sukuma wiki, a cup of boiled lentils, or eight oranges every day.