Home birth defects , folic acid , Vitamins Low-carb diets lead to birth defects?

Low-carb diets lead to birth defects?

Catherine McDiarmid-Watt | Wednesday, April 11, 2018 | 0 comments

Image: Pregnant Girl Eating Cake, by FoodandYou (o5com), on Flickr

Photo credit: Pregnant Girl Eating Cake,by FoodandYou

Low levels of folate in women may be due to lack of bread, officials say

ATLANTA - Blood levels of folate in young women are dropping, a disturbing development that could lead to increased birth defects and may be due to low-carb diets or the popularity of unfortified whole-grain breads.

Government health officials could only speculate on the reasons but called the backslide in this important B vitamin disturbing.

It's not clear how the decline in folate levels has affected newborns, but preliminary data suggest the dramatic declines in neural tube defects seen in the late 1990s may have leveled off by 2004, said officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This is a cause of substantial concern, said Dr. Nancy Green, medical director for the March of Dimes, which campaigns for birth defects prevention.

Folate is a naturally occurring B vitamin. An artificial version, which is more easily metabolized by the body, is folic acid.

Years ago, scientists concluded that folate deficiencies contributed to the occurrence of serious birth defects of the spine and brain, known as neural tube defects.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:

Image: The Infertility Cleanse: Detox, Diet and Dharma for Fertility, by Tami Quinn and Beth Heller. Publisher: Findhorn Press; Pap/DVD edition (October 7, 2011)

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Category: birth defects, folic acid, Vitamins

About Catherine: I am mom to three grown sons, two grandchildren and two rescue dogs. After years of raising my boys as a single mom, I remarried a wonderful man who had never had a child of his own. Unexpectedly, I found myself pregnant at 49!
Sadly we lost that precious baby at 8 weeks, and decided to try again. Five more losses, turned down for donor egg, foster care and adoption due to my age and losses - we have accepted that there will be no more babies in our house.

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