The Better Baby Book (17 page)

A deficiency in pantothenic acid leads to a shortage of adrenal hormones and poor adrenal function, low blood sugar and blood pressure, and a shortage of digestive enzymes and slow peristaltic (intestinal) action. The symptoms are indigestion, constipation, food allergies, depression, discontentment, irritability, and, in extreme cases, nausea, vomiting, and insomnia. The chronic stress from exhausted adrenals and the headaches and dizziness that result from low blood sugar are known to harm an unborn baby's central nervous system. In lab animals, a pantothenic acid deficiency is linked to abnormalities in the nervous system, cleft palate, heart defects, club foot, poor myelination (sheathing) of nerve tissue, and miscarriage. Similar effects are suspected in people.

Pantothenic acid is abundant in many foods, especially in organ meats, egg yolks, and green vegetables. Pantothenic acid is water-soluble and nontoxic, so we recommend taking at least an additional ten milligrams per day during pregnancy to make sure you have enough. Pantothenic acid will protect your baby, and Lana found that it eased the daily stresses of pregnancy.

Folate: The Right Form of Folic Acid

For a long time women of childbearing age have been advised to supplement with folic acid, or B9, to prevent neural tube defects in their children. This practice has reduced neural tube defect prevalence by 50 to 70 percent. But many people don't know that folic acid is the just the beginning of what you can do to protect your baby, and that the commonly used form isn't the right one.

Epigenetics has taught us that the best times to prevent miscarriage and birth defects are before pregnancy and immediately after conception. Early miscarriage may result from a state of poor nutrition or hormonal imbalance immediately preceding conception. Many serious birth defects originate within the first eight weeks of pregnancy while the baby's organs are forming.

Nearly everyone has heard that pregnant women should take folic acid to prevent birth defects. What they haven't heard is that folic acid is the synthetic form and that only a small percentage of folic acid converts to the active form, which is called
folate
or
folinic acid
(sometimes marketed as tetrahydorfolate or 5-MTHF). To make matters worse, 60 percent of people have genes that reduce their ability to convert folic acid into the active form. We need the active form of folate to synthesize, repair, and express DNA—all essential processes for using epigenetics to improve your baby's lifelong health.

Folate is used to form red blood cells in bone marrow, where it also helps to make antibodies by using sugars and amino acids. Folate works with vitamin B12 in the formation of hemoglobin and is essential for zinc metabolism. It's a fundamental ingredient to good health and plays a crucial role in pregnancy, because a mother's body needs a lot of it to share with her baby.

The benefits of taking folate during pregnancy have been widely publicized, and it's included (as the synthetic form, folic acid) in most prenatal supplements. Nonetheless, a deficiency is common during pregnancy. A mother's deficiency in folate can lead to fetal abnormalities like cleft palate, harelip, deformed limbs, neural tube defects like spina bifida, skeletal deformities, lung and kidney underdevelopment, cataracts, brain deformities, and anemia. Underdevelopment of the heart, diaphragm, urogenital system, blood vessels, adrenals, and eyes can also result.

Supplementing with
folinic
acid especially helps to prevent fetal abnormalities relating to neural tube defects. Studies suggest that women who supplement with folate during the month of conception and the first eight to ten weeks after conception are less likely to have a malformed baby. We recommend taking 800 micrograms per day. Good sources of the active form of folate are green leafy vegetables, organ meats, root vegetables, and nuts.

Folinic acid supplements are very affordable, and it's worth spending about five dollars more a month to get this form instead of plain folic acid. When taken as a supplement, synthetic folic acid begins to accumulate in the bloodstream at just 400 micrograms per day. This means it isn't being processed by the body.

B12: A Versatile Nutrient

B12 has many uses. It is part of the production and regeneration of red blood cells and the general metabolic function of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. It's a key component of a certain sequence of enzyme reactions known as the Krebs cycle. B12 also aids the body in the use of iron, combines with folic acid to form choline, and is a component in the formation of RNA and DNA.

A deficiency in B12 is dangerous. A mild deficiency can lead to pernicious anemia, nerve degeneration, a sore mouth and tongue, and brain damage. A severe deficiency can lead to deterioration of the spinal cord and eventually paralysis. B12's large role in nerve function underscores its importance in the proper development of your baby's neural tube and nervous system.

Research links a low B12 level with an increased risk of neural tube defects (they accounted for preexisting folate levels). They noticed that B12 was metabolically related to folate and that previous studies had also found mothers of children with neural tube defects to be low in B12. The study concluded that women should have B12 levels over 300 nanograms per liter (221 picomoles per liter) before becoming pregnant.

Good food sources of B12 are organ meats, eggs, dulse and kelp (types of seaweed), and spirulina. If you supplement with B-complex, it's best to take it with vitamin C and with meals. Cyanocobalamin is the most popular form of B12, but the body doesn't absorb it very well. When looking for a quality B12 supplement that your body will easily absorb and use, look for the B12 ingredient to be methylcobalamin or hydroxocobalamin. Vitamin B12 is almost always found in foods made from animal products, so if you're a vegan, it's even more important to find a good B12 supplement.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a potent antioxidant that plays a central role in collagen synthesis. Collagen is a big part of our blood vessels, tendons, ligaments, and bones. Vitamin C keeps the body resistant to penetration by intruders like viruses, toxins, or dangerous drugs; it promotes healing after infection, injury, or surgery and keeps the capillary walls in good form; and it helps the body to absorb and use iron, preventing anemia. As an ingredient of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, vitamin C is important for mental health, and as an ingredient in carnitine, it supports metabolism and a healthy energy level.

A deficiency in vitamin C can result in scurvy, dandruff, hemorrhaging, spontaneous bleeding, infection, easily broken bones, and, most important for our purpose here, miscarriage. Good food sources of vitamin C are citrus fruits, tomatoes, broccoli and other green vegetables (including parsley), strawberries, apples, pears, carrots, and cauliflower. Vitamin C is water-soluble and is lost in storage in the body, so it's important to take a good supplement or eat foods rich in vitamin C regularly. Vitamin C is most useful to the body when it's taken with other vitamins and minerals, bioflavonoids, calcium, and magnesium, so the best time to take it is with a meal.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D-3 (cholecalciferol) is actually not a vitamin, it's a prohormone. Prohormones are building blocks of fully formed bioactive hormones. When a person is exposed to sunlight, vitamin D is produced naturally in the skin and the eyes. It can also be taken effectively as a supplement. Much of what we know about vitamin D comes from John Cannell, a doctor who is the head of the Vitamin D Council in San Luis Obispo, California. For years he has published world-class research on the involvement of vitamin D deficiency in a wide range of health problems.

Vitamin D has the following functions inside the body:

• It is central to brain and nervous system function and the prevention of multiple sclerosis.
  
• It is central to fertility and the prevention of breast, uterine, colon and ovarian cancers.
  
• It boosts the immune system by increasing the natural production of antibiotic and antiviral mechanisms inside the body, which prevents short-term infections like influenza and colds.
  
• It detoxifies the brain and body of heavy metals like mercury.
  
• It helps the body to bind and eliminate mycotoxins.
  
• It aids in the correct translation of more than two thousand genes (nearly 10 percent of your genes).
  
• It reduces the severity of the body's (autoimmune) attacks on its own tissues.
  

The detoxifying benefits make vitamin D as important for prospective fathers as for expecting mothers. When a man deficient in vitamin D ingests toxins, they cause oxidative damage that can result in genetic mutations (genetic damage) in sperm. These mutations can lead to autism in children.

In a recent study, vitamin D proved so important for fetal nervous system and cognition development that even mothers who consumed more mercury-contaminated fish (fish naturally has some vitamin D) had babies with higher than average cognition. That is, vitamin D is so beneficial for a developing fetus that it counteracted the harmful effects of toxic mercury to produce a net benefit.

Another study proved that this net effect was not a result of the omega-3 fatty acids in the fish. Yet another concluded that mothers who consumed less mercury-contaminated fish during pregnancy had babies who exhibited more autistic symptoms than the babies of mothers who consumed more mercury-containing fish. Of course, eating mercury-free fish rich in vitamin D would be a better option, and fortunately it's an option we still have.

Vitamin D Deficiency and Autism

Research suggests that a vitamin D deficiency contributes to autism. This makes sense if autism is a neuroinflammatory condition, because vitamin D protects the body from neurotoxins. Consider these facts:

• Autism is more common in cloudy, rainy regions.
  
• People with darker skin have a higher rate of autism than people with lighter skin. Darker skin protects a person from ultraviolet exposure better than lighter skin does, but it also causes a person to make less vitamin D from a given level of sun exposure than a person with lighter skin would make.
  
• Autism is more common in the northern United States than in the southern part of the country. There is less direct sun exposure in the northern regions.
  
• Autism is more common in urban regions, where the lifestyle is more indoors, than in rural regions, where an outdoor lifestyle is common.
  
• Bone abnormalities are more common in autistic children than they are in nonautistic children. The abnormalities often resemble mild cases of chronic rickets, a bone disorder resulting from a vitamin D deficiency.
  

Other Risks of Vitamin D Deficiency

Vitamin D deficiency in a mother has been linked to a number of risks related to her pregnancy and the health of her child. A vitamin D deficiency is surely dangerous for a pregnant woman, but irreversible damage may be done to her child in utero. Vitamin D is required for proper development during critical development stages, so its absence can have lasting effects that will not be reversed with vitamin D supplements after birth. Some of the effects may not become evident until the child is in his or her thirties.

Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to the following risks in mother and child:

Risks for Mother

• Bacterial vaginitis (twice as likely).
  
• Caesarian section (four times as likely).
  
• Gestational diabetes (three times as likely).
  
• Preeclampsia (five times as likely).
  
• Premature birth.
  

Risks for Baby

• Asthma (vitamin D is critical to fetal lung development).
  
• Cavities in young children.
  
• Certain brain tumors and epilepsy—correlated with winter births, when a mother's vitamin D level is naturally lower.
  
• Infant heart failure.
  
• Lower respiratory tract infections in infants.
  
• Schizophrenia (the risk increases dramatically, and the rates have increased in recent years). Factors associated with increased rates are prenatal infection, omega-3 deficiency, and vitamin D deficiency.
  
• Seizures from hypocalcemia (calcium deficiency).
  
• Sepsis in premature infants.
  
• Weak bones later in life.
  

Optimizing Your D Level

You should supplement with D to have the best possible pregnancy. Ideally, you should start well before pregnancy to build up your levels. Once a fetus has been exposed to neurotoxins like mercury with no vitamin D to protect it, it can sometimes be too late to reverse the damage. We believe that supplying the child with appropriate amounts of vitamin D after birth will undoubtedly improve his or her health, but it's never been observed to make up for the damage done from a vitamin D deficiency during critical development stages in the womb.

The first step is to have a 25-hydroxy vitamin D (known as a 25-OH-D) blood test done. (The 1.25-dihydroxy vitamin D test that many physicians use is ineffective.) This test is available for purchase without a doctor's prescription. If you're working with a doctor's office, be sure to ask for a copy of your test results. Your vitamin D level should be between 50 and 80 nanograms per milliliter. If it's lower than that, don't be surprised. Less than 5 percent of Americans are in this ideal range. If you're below 50 nanograms per milliliter, any little bit of D the body gets is instantly used, and there is no reserve.

In November 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics advised obstetric health-care professionals nationwide to administer 25-OH-D tests to their patients and recommend supplementation to patients with levels below 32 nanograms per milliliter. Although that level might be enough, we made sure that both of our levels were around 80 nanograms per milliliter before we conceived.

If your vitamin D level is sufficient and you choose not to supplement it, we recommend monitoring your level throughout pregnancy to make sure it doesn't fall out of range (especially in the winter). If the test shows that you're deficient, which D supplement should you buy and how much should you take?