Contents
A healthy pregnancy in a healthy body. When planning motherhood consciously, a woman should have knowledge about her health, as well as the quality of her diet and supplementation.
First: health
Pregnancy is a specific period in a woman’s life, both immunologically and metabolic, when certain disease states that have not been observed before may become apparent. A woman preparing for pregnancy should therefore first be screened for systemic health. This is the basic point that women planning motherhood should focus on, because the results of this research will influence their further decisions.
Second: a balanced food diet and supplementation
The second element is the diet – very important both for the pregnant, not pregnant, and the developing child. It has to be balanced. The optimal supply of macro-, micronutrients and vitamins in the pre-contraceptive period, during pregnancy and during lactation has a positive effect on intrauterine growth of the fetus and supplements the deficiencies of certain components in the mother [1].
There are several studies in the Polish community on several dietary elements, such as folic acid, vitamin D, iron, iodine and DHA, which provide hard evidence that these ingredients should be supplemented to some extent by pregnant women. We are currently at the stage of updating recommendations relating to supplementation in pregnant women.
Third: moderation in supplementation
The Polish Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians is inclined to ensure that the dietary supplement for a woman on the maternity path should contain only the five active ingredients listed, and not the entire Mendeleev table. These ingredients have documented test results, have a beneficial effect on the course of pregnancy and the health of the woman after childbirth and during lactation.
There is no need to use more ingredients in dietary supplements for expectant mothers. All you need is a good food diet enriched with certified preparations containing folic acid, vitamin D3, iron, iodine and DHA.
Taking other supplement ingredients on your own is not a good solution, also because both the activities of these elements in the body and the interactions between individual ingredients have not been fully researched. Also, do not exaggerate with overloading the digestive tract (e.g. by striving to achieve the so-called intestinal threshold for supplemented ingredients), because the villi in the intestines, responsible for the absorption of nutrients from the digestive content, may have a problem with maintaining effective action if they will be overloaded with work.
Fourth: good quality, absorbability and tolerance of supplement ingredients
It is very important that the active elements contained in the dietary supplement are of appropriate quality, are easily absorbed and are well tolerated by the body. You should pay attention not only to the dose and quality, but also to the form of supplemented ingredients. For example: iron – an essential ingredient for expectant mothers and nursing women, but administered in small doses, the so-called supplementation, not medical treatment, is recommendable. Not every form of it (even if it is similarly absorbable) is well tolerated. And this tolerance largely determines the acceptability of the preparation by women. For example, bisglycinate is one of the best tolerated and digestible forms of iron, and is already available in some preparations.
DHA is also an important ingredient for women before, during and after pregnancy. As with iron, it can be supplemented in various forms. Research confirms that DHA in the form of triglycerides is significantly more absorbable. The optimal dose for this compound is yet to be determined and discussions are ongoing, but about 600-800 mg per day appears to be an appropriate dose.
Research confirms that the deficiency of nutrients in a woman’s diet has certain negative effects on the child’s development in the prenatal period. This deficit may also be harmful to the woman – the fetus is able to obtain from the mother’s organism the ingredients necessary for its development, and in the case of their deficiency, it will do so at the expense of the mother’s health. Therefore, a woman should take care of her body before becoming pregnant, and take care of herself during pregnancy and after childbirth.
Author: prof. dr hab. Mariusz Zimmer, President of the Polish Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians
The material was published as part of the educational campaign “Pregnancy – Conscious motherhood”, the media partner of which is Medonet. All materials are available on the website http://ciaza.warsawpress.com/
[1] Recommendations of the Polish Gynecological Society on the use of vitamins and micronutrients in pregnant and lactating women planning pregnancy; Ginekol Pol. 5/2014, 85, 395-399