Prenatal Care Diet Recommendations - Health Channel

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Prenatal Care Diet Recommendations |

Diet, eating habits, prenatal vitamins and all of the information that is possible are necessary when a woman gets pregnant.
Dr. Ellen Schwartzbard, Obstetrician and Gynecologist with Baptist Health South Florida, affirms ideally when the couple is planning a pregnancy; a woman should start to take folic acid. It decreases the risk of neural tube defects such as spina bifida.
400 milligrams of folic acid is the recommended amount to be taking daily, she says.

Transcript

First one what are the first steps wants to take when they decide okay I’m ready to start a family, I want to be a mom and my husband wants to be a dad, is it the prenatal vitamins? is it exercise? what is it? So if you’re lucky enough that they do come in before, that pre pregnancy visit there’s so many questions that you need to go over, you want to go over their medical history, you want to go over what medications they’re taking, both the mom and potentially the partner that can also have an impact, you want to go over their diet, eating habits those prenatal vitamins, you want to go over their ethnicity and we’re going to go into that and the importance of that in the show today. And what about folic acid supplements is that important as well when should they start that? Ideally when they’re planning a pregnancy folic acid is extremely important, it’s been known to decrease the risk of neural tube defects that’s spina bifida, so you you want them to be getting that foods today or fortified, that’s been March of Dimes it’s extremely important because of all these unplanned pregnancies not everybody is actually taking a folic acid supplement, so 400 milligrams is the recommended amount to be taking, but we fortunately do have all those fortified foods.

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