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With the hoard of diet recommendations that pregnant women receive, they are also advised to take multivitamin pills during pregnancy. But did you know that pregnancy multivitamins don’t serve the purpose? If you have already burnt your pockets by spending on multivitamins during pregnancy, then its time to watch out. Researchers say that you might be wasting your money over pregnancy multivitamins because most moms-to-be don’t need them.
A panel of scientists who wrote in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin have said that they have evaluated all the evidence they have and found that supplements do nothing to boost the health of mothers and babies. The scientists looked for ‘good evidence’ in the risk of neural tube defects such as spina bifida (1) for the use of folic acid for reducing. They also looked for the evidence that there is a good use of vitamin D regarding bone and tooth formation and the ability to absorb calcium.
With the strong evidence gathered, researchers can say that pregnant women should pay more attention to taking folic acid and vitamin D besides eating a well-balanced diet in compliance with NHS guidelines. About 400 micrograms a day is said to protect babies against spina bifida. The daily recommended dose of Vitamin D is said to be ten micrograms a day for healthy bones in mother and baby.
One supplement that can turn out to be dangerous in pregnancy is vitamin A because too much of it is going to be harmful to your baby.
Pregnant women are led to believe through false marketing claims that multivitamins could give their babies a healthy start in life. But in reality, these marketing claims don’t seem to translate in the outcome that the mother or baby have. In fact, women might be wise by investing in vitamin D and folic acid at a relatively low cost when compared to the expensive multivitamins. Consider a scenario in the UK alone where your pregnancy multivitamin pills can cost about GBP 20 per month while your folic acid pills for the whole month would cost less than GPB 1 a month! It’s not just the financial advantage, but also the genuine nutritional benefit that you can want to derive through the supplements.
Instead of relying so much on multivitamins that normally contain about 20 vitamins and minerals, women should have a healthy balanced diet and make sure that they eat fresh fruits and vegetables to get the necessary nutrients, besides taking folic acid supplements.
Moreover, researchers have also pointed out that eating for two might be just another myth. In fact, all that a woman requires eating during pregnancy is a normal balanced amount of food, is what they suggest.
It also turns out that most of the marketing claims for multivitamin supplements come from studies carried out in low-income countries where women are undernourished or malnourished when compared to women in the UK.
However, the Health Food Manufacturer’s Association which represents the food supplement industry lays emphasis on the supplements in that a substantive proportion of women of child-bearing age are deprived of the nutrients from depending on their diet alone. The industry-funded Health Supplements Information Service believes that food supplements help bridge the dietary gaps.
On the other hand, quite a few American doctors believe that prenatal multivitamin supplements might not be a complete waste of money after all. Dr. Scott Sullivan at the Medical University of South Carolina believes that the typical diet is low in iron-rich foods. Therefore several pregnant women turn out to be anemic. As a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), he suggests that women should take iron, iodine, calcium supplements along with vitamins A, B, and C. Sullivan adds that while there is no strong evidence that the supplements help the fetus, there is no evidence that they are harmful to the fetus either. Moreover, in the American market, the supplements don’t increase the costs to the patient considerably, he says. In his observation, more expensive brands were less likely to contain the necessary nutrients when compared to the less known brands.
