Healthy diet can prevent birth defects
Women who follow a low-fat, fiber-rich diet in the year before becoming pregnant have a significantly lower risk of having babies with certain birth defects.
It has always been said that mother's dist greatly affects the baby’s and her own health.
Previous findings had shown that some minerals or supplements such as folic acid and vitamin B may prevent some birth defects.
The new study, which is believed to be largest of its kind, says healthy Mediterranean-style diets may prevent various defects including neural-tube defects, or malformations of the brain and spinal cord, and orofacial clefts.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine studied about 10,000 US mothers, 3,411 of whom gave birth to babies with birth defects.
According to the results published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, women who had a Mediterranean-style diet in the year before pregnancy were at 36 percent to 51 percent lower risk of having babies with certain birth defects.
Those who followed diets rich in meat, fat, and sugar were more likely to have a baby with anencephaly or neural-tube defect.
Compared with women who ate fat- and sugar-heavy diets, those who received plenty of folate, iron, and calcium through their food had a one-third lower risk of cleft lip, a one-quarter lower risk of cleft palate, and a one-fifth lower risk of spina bifida, another neural-tube defect.
”These results suggest that dietary approaches could lead to further reduction in risks of major birth defects and complement existing efforts to fortify foods and encourage periconceptional multivitamin use,” scientists concluded.
”What’s important about this study is that it shows that the whole diet matters - not just one nutrient or supplement,” said lead researcher Suzan L. Carmichael. ”Those things are important, too, but this shows that you have to eat right.”
Heath experts emphasize that healthy diets may have a crucial role in preventing birth defects but there are other factors involved in their unborn babies' health that parents should consider before and during pregnancy.
Source: presstv.ir
