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Folic Acid: A key nutrient for a healthy baby

Washington's Voz
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Gloria Spencer, Nutricionist
06/24/2005

Good news!
The premise that optimum nutrition can greatly improve your chances of having a healthy pregnancy is rapidly gaining wider acceptance in the scientist's world.

Surveys have shown that even the slightest deficiencies of Vitamins B1, B2 and B6, folic acid, zinc, iron, calcium and magnesium have all been linked to birth defects.

Vitamins are, by definition, necessary elements for maintaining normal growth of the fetus. During pregnancy, mothers should be aware that the requirements of these nutrients are greater than normal, since their food intake should cover their own needs as well as the needs of the future baby.

The paramount importance of folic acid is now recognized due to its roll in the prevention of neural tube defects in the unborn baby. The neural tube is a tubular structure in the embryo which later develops into the central nervous system.

Statistics in this regard are impressive: as many as 5% of births show some developmental defect, many of which affect the central nervous system, the most common of which is known as Spina Bifida.

Spina Bifida, a condition in which the spinal chord does not develop properly , has been strongly linked to a lack of folic acid and perhaps other nutrients in the mother's diet, especially during the first 3 months of pregnancy, when all the organs of the baby's body are completely formed. A survey of 23,000 women at risk found that those who improved their diet during the first six weeks of pregnancy and supplemented their diet with folic acid, had a 75% more successful pregnancies that those who did not.

Folic acid deficiency can be determined by blood tests. It is a fact that the American diet only supplies an average intake between 109 and 203 mcg per day, which is not enough to cover the daily US government recommended dose of 400 mcg of folic acid for pregnant women.

Therefore, it is strongly suggested to have an intake at least 300 mcg on a daily basis, even for those women intending to become pregnant.

It is very important to eat small, frequent amounts of fresh fruit, nuts and seeds or complex carbohydrates like whole grain, as well as other foods with an abundant folic acid content, such as: wheat germ, spinach, peanuts, sprouts, asparagus, sesame seeds, hazelnuts, broccoli, cashew nuts, cauliflower, walnuts and avocados.

Conditions like “morning sickness” or pre-eclamptic toxemia (consistent of an increase in blood pressure, swelling and excessive protein in the urine) could manifest more frequently in mothers that have had a nutritionally poor diet.

Folic acid works better when consumed with food and other B complex vitamins, zinc, calcium, magnesium and iron. Many nutritionists agree that an adequate intake of all these nutrients usually stop even the worst causes of pregnancy sickness.