Do you know that you can really save the baby in your womb from a lot of birth imperfections by adopting a healthier way of eating? According to a research, a healthy diet (e. G the Mediterranean diet) can significantly reduce the risk of birth defects like neural tube defects and orofacial splits. Now, if this is not this reason enough to switch to a more healthy pregnancy diet, I'm not sure what else is.
A Closer Look at the Difficulty
According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1,500 babies in America are born every year with spina bifida “a type of neural tube defect (NTD) wherein the backbone and the spinal canal do not close after birth. This condition is often referred to as myelomeningocele or a cleft spine.
The CDC further guesses that about 900 babies (or one in every 4,859 births) in the States will be born with some pieces of the brain and skull missing. This is one more sort of neural tube defect known as anencephaly. Infants born with this condition are not anticipated to survive and may die right after birth.
Orofacial clefts, on the other hand, affect more than 7,000 infants in the States each year. According to CDC estimates, more than 2,500 babies are born with a cleft palate while about 4,500 infants are born with a split lip or without a cleft palate.
Children born with these defects will necessarily need treatments. Babies born with spina bifida will have various degrees of mobility and physical restrictions. They may ultimately walk without any aids as they age or may require the use of crutches, braces, walkers or wheelchairs. Babies born with orofacial clefts, on the other hand, will always require curative surgery, preferably in the first 12 months of their lives.
Conquering the Difficulty “Promising Results of Related Studies
According to the September 1992 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, research proved that adding about 0.4 milligram or 400 micrograms of folic acid in a woman’s diet can noticeably reduce the number of neural tube defects. Now, since majority of NTD cases happen during the initial few weeks of pregnancy (even before the woman knows she's pregnant), experts advocated that all ladies of child-bearing age should take daily folic acid augmentation. This resulted in a 31% decrease in the prevalence of NTD cases in the US between 1995 and 1996.
In a research conducted by Doctor. Margaret A. Honein, MILES PER HOUR, State Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and other leading experts at the field, it was noted that fortifying enriched cereals with folic acid resulted in a further 19% reduction in NTD cases from 1998 to 1999. The complete details of this research are documented in the 2001 Book of the American Medical Association.
Primarily based on the suggestions of these earlier studies, Doctor. Suzan L. Carmichael, associate professor of paediatrics at the Stanford College in Stanford, California, together with 1 or 2 expert colleagues, decided to go a nick further and studied the effects of eating a good diet during pregnancy with the incidence of NTDs. Using info from the Nation's Birth Imperfections Prevention Study, they compared about 3,400 ladies who gave birth to babies with NTDs or orofacial clefts with 6,100 women who gave birth to brilliantly healthy babies.
As their studies show, women who followed a diet closely looking a little like the Mediterranean diet are less sure to have babies with birth problems. They were discovered to be:
- 50% less sure to give birth to babies with anencephaly
- 34% less likely to have babies with split lip
- 26% less sure to have babies with cleft palate
All these are documented in the October 2011 online copy of the Archives of Pediatrics and Teen Medicine.
All of these proves that a healthy, Mediterranean-like diet can do plenty of good for you and your baby. Hence if you really want to give your baby a good head-start in life, ensure you do what’s best for her. And you can start by eating a fitter diet.
Reference from http://www.pinoygigs.com/blog/tag/pregnant-women/and from newbiemommy.com.
Kitty Baker provides frequent tips and insights on pregnancyand pregnancy and provides a helpful reference ebook on achieving a healthy pregnancy diet.