Do Pregnant Women need to Take Vitamins and Minerals’ Supplements routinely?
Journal Title: Open Access Journal of Reproductive System and Sexual Disorders - Year 2019, Vol 2, Issue 2
Abstract
Pregnancy represents a period of rapid change in the maternal physiology and nutritional requirement. These biological changes allow the mother to fulfill the needs of growing fetus and placenta and these changes occur within weeks of commencement of pregnancy. Vast majority of dietary recommendations during pregnancy has focused on maintaining adequate caloric intake while avoiding substances that may potentially harm the growing fetus. Most of the pregnant women take prenatal vitamins and some mineral supplements. Some of these vitamins have been studied directly, example folic acid and their recommended allowance comes from solid evidence, but for most of the vitamins, data are limited, and studies results can be biased by confounding factors. Good nutrition and healthy eating with essential macro and micronutrients are the corner stone for growing babies and pregnancy outcome. Pregnant women may spend extra efforts to have healthy balanced diet, but this will be reflected as a major health benefit for the women and their babies. Pregnancy is a good chance to change the bad old habits of eating and balanced diet and changing to healthy new ones and this may extend throughout pregnancy and breastfeeding period. The discussion focuses primarily on the data gained from the developed world, because the nutritional challenges of the developing world are distinct. That’s why advising the pregnant women to take specific supplementation is a difficult task because so many different formulations are available in the pharmacies and shopping malls. Since 1997, the institute of medicine (IOM) food and nutrition board has been publishing dietary references intake (DRIs) for healthy people throughout lifetime including pregnancy. These tables include recommended daily allowance (RDAs) for which the committee believed that there was sound evidence to make such a recommendation. In some instances, the food and nutrition board did not have enough data to determine RDAs, therefore, the available information combined with the expert opinion was used to estimate adequate intake value.
Authors and Affiliations
Saadi AlJadir
Keywords
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- EP ID EP648359
- DOI 10.32474/OAJRSD.2018.02.000131
- Views 92
- Downloads 0
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