What Are Prenatal Vitamins?
The vitamin aisle at your local pharmacy contains a huge assortment of vitamins for different genders and ages. The concept behind prenatal vitamins is that some of a women’s nutritional and vitamin needs increase with pregnancy. A baby especially needs certain nutrients to develop.
Expectant moms don’t always take in enough nutrients in their daily diets. It’s important to remember that prenatal vitamins are a supplement to a healthy diet for expectant moms. They aren’t a replacement for a healthy diet.
How Are Prenatal Vitamins Different From Traditional Multivitamins?
While there’s not a specific formulation for all prenatal vitamins, you’ll likely find that prenatal vitamins contain at least these key nutrients: Calcium. According to the Mayo Clinic, pregnant and adult women need 1,000 milligrams (mg) of calcium daily. Prenatal vitamins typically have between 200 and 300 mg of calcium.
This contributes to a woman’s calcium requirements but doesn’t account for all of her daily calcium needs. Taking in enough folic acid is linked with reducing neural tube defects like spina bifida. Since it may be difficult to get this much folic acid from foods alone, a supplement is recommended.
Foods that have folic acid (also known as folate) include beans, leafy green vegetables, asparagus, and broccoli. Because a woman increases her blood volume during pregnancy, iron is a must-have. According to the Mayo Clinic, pregnant women need 27 mg of iron a day.
Prenatal vitamins often contain other vitamins and minerals. These could include: omega-3 fatty acids
copper
zinc
vitamin E
vitamin A
vitamin C.
When Should I Take Prenatal Vitamins?
Always talk with your doctor before starting to take prenatal vitamins.
If you’re trying to conceive or are pregnant, your doctor will likely recommend that you take them. Women who are carrying multiples, pregnant teenagers, and pregnant women with a history of substance abuse have a higher risk of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Prenatal vitamins are particularly important for these women.
Prenatal vitamins can serve as a further supplement to lactating women who need plenty of nutrients to make breast milk. Even if you aren’t trying to get pregnant, you still might want to take a folic acid supplement.
Can I Take Prenatal Vitamins If I Don’T Want To Get Pregnant?
Prenatal vitamins are specific to the needs of pregnant and breastfeeding women. But they aren’t really intended for women (or men) who aren’t expecting or lactating. Excess iron can be a problem, too.
Getting too much iron is associated with health problems like constipation, nausea, and diarrhea. Excess amounts of nutrients like vitamin A taken from synthetic vitamins could be toxic to a person’s liver. For these reasons, most women should skip prenatal vitamins unless their doctors tell them otherwise.
Misconceptions about prenatal vitamins Many women claim that prenatal vitamins affect hair and nail growth. But according to the Mayo Clinic, these claims haven’t been proven. Taking prenatal vitamins for better hair or nails likely won’t bring the desired results.
They could also have adverse side effects.
Article Content
For example, many pregnant people do not consume the recommended amount of choline, so we included it in our prenatal multivitamin. We also added iodine, since the recommended amount of iodine increases during pregnancy.
Our third addition to our prenatal multivitamin: biotin, because scientific evidence suggests that higher biotin intake may be needed to meet the requirement for pregnancy. *
In some cases, we need the same nutrients as we do before pregnancy, but at different levels. For example, our.
Essential Prenatal
As a reminder, folic acid is a synthetic form of folate found in many supplements—but folic acid isn’t always an ideal form of folate for the body to efficiently utilize. A good rule to shoot for is three months ahead, so that people can be already taking a prenatal multivitamin during the early weeks of pregnancy (before they might even know that they’re pregnant). Let’s talk about biotin as an example: Many women can meet their biotin needs through diet alone, since it’s found in a wide range of foods like eggs, avocado, beef, and yeast.
*
Recently Gave Birth?
Then consider making a different multivitamin switch—from a prenatal multivitamin to a postnatal multivitamin. *
What About Iron?
Another common question is iron. And while it’s true that some non-pregnant people may need more iron than others (due to vegan and other restrictive diets, as well as certain conditions), we recommend consulting with a healthcare provider to determine how to go about supplementation for specific needs before making the switch to a prenatal multivitamin. If neither, a quality daily multivitamin may be the way to go.
And for all of the above, don’t forget to lead with a mostly-healthy, balanced diet.