|
If You Are a Woman Wanting to Have a Baby, Read This or You Could Be Kicking Yourself for the Rest of Your Life
Now declared by health and medical authorities throughout the world to be an essential medicine for conception and throughout pregnancy, folic acid has become more than a dietary supplement. It is considered so important for healthy development of a foetus that its addition to bread-making flour is mandated by law in Canada and other countries.
Folic acid is known as folate or vitamin B9 in its natural form, where it appears in green leafy vegetables like cabbage and spinach, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, legumes, nuts and red meat. However, food preparation and processing can destroy up to 100% of folate in fresh food sources because it is sensitive to light, oxygen and heat, so raw and fortified foods (processed ones that have had folic acid added) are considered superior sources.
Or you can take a folic acid supplement such as Vita Folic Acid. This folic acid is more completely absorbed than folate from food and it means eating a lot less fortified bread and cereals. When Vita Folic Acid is taken with food, up to double is absorbed (85–100%) by the body compared with other dietary forms (50–66%).
Why is folic acid so important? It donates methyl compounds in so many biochemical reactions in our bodies, such as creation of our DNA and RNA, producing active vitamin B12 (important for nerves), reduction of homocysteine (a molecule associated with heart disease risk), and synthesis of amino acids necessary for growth and repair. On a practical level...
Poor Folate Levels Either a Month Before Conception or During the First Trimester of Pregnancy is an Independent
Risk Factor for Neural Tube Defects in Your Newborn
In neural tube defects, the baby does not have their spinal cord or brain formed properly, and lifelong retardative conditions such as spina bifida or anencephaly (absence of brain tissue) occur.
Sadly, neural tube defects are one of the most common birth abnormalities and occur in about one in 1000 live births in the US. By the time a lot of women realise they are pregnant, if they are folate deficient they may already be carrying a child with neural tube defects. Yet they are preventable with proper folate levels in the mother a month or two before conception and through the first three months of pregnancy.
This is why governments have forced food industries to fortify foods with folic acid, but the levels in fortified foods are still not high enough to guarantee no more neural tube defects, although the incidence has declined. Now, all pediatricians and obstetrician gynaecologists insist all their female patients wanting a baby start supplementing with folic acid as they plan their pregnancy. This is even more the case in women who have used the oral contraceptive pill long term, as it can decrease up to 40% of folate from blood serum.
Even if you’re not a woman wanting to get pregnant, folic acid is still too important to ignore. It is not uncommon to develop folate deficiency because it can occur over only four months of a diet lacking in fresh, lightly cooked vegetables. Deficiency will impact most on tissues where there is a lot of development, repair and cell turnover, e.g. blood and the digestive tract, resulting in anaemia, fatigue, irritability and depression, headache, hair loss, nausea, insomnia, nerve damage in feet/hands, loose tendons, diarrhoea, weight loss, dementia and mental decline.
This wonder nutrient also helps heart health, depression and psychiatric illnesses, prevents cancer of the colon and cervix (two of the most common in the Western world) and gum disease, among many other conditions and metabolic systems.
The US Centers for Disease Control recommend that women who could become pregnant should get 400 mcg of folic acid daily, which is one Vita Folic Acid capsule. Women who are pregnant should receive 1 mg daily, and women who have previously given birth to a child with a neural tube defect should get 4 mg daily.
|
