More health advice needed before pregnancy
13 February 2009
Most women overlook experts’ advice to eat well and live a healthy lifestyle before becoming pregnant, research published in the British Medical Journal has shown.
Scientists at the Medical Research Council’s Epidemiology Resource Centre at the University of Southampton found very few women changed their diet or lifestyle in the lead up to pregnancy.
Researchers reported that there was very little advice publicised about the changes women should make in the lead up to becoming pregnant although there was an abundance of advice once they became pregnant.
Lead author Hazel Inskip said: “Advice for women considering pregnancy is not widely publicised yet the baby is at risk from conception, before a woman knows she is pregnant. The first few days and weeks of pregnancy are particularly important for fetal development and women need to be as healthy as possible as they embark on pregnancy.”
Researchers interviewed 12,445 non-pregnant women aged 20-34 living in Southampton about their diet, physical activity, alcohol consumption and nutritional supplement use as part of a general survey on health. Two hundred and thirty-eight of the women became pregnant within three months of the interview.
The results showed:
- Only seven of the 238 women who became pregnant were taking the recommended daily dose of folic acid and drinking no more than four units of alcohol per week.
- 57% of the women who became pregnant undertook some recommended strenuous exercise in the three-month period after the interview compared with a larger percentage of 64% who did not become pregnant.
- Women in each group consumed equal amounts of the recommended five or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day.
“We wanted to see whether women complied with recommendations about their diet and lifestyle before they became pregnant and we found their behaviour differed little from the behaviour of other women,” Professor Inskip said.
“It is very difficult, however, for women to plan for pregnancy as they’re unsure when they will conceive, so it’s not surprising that women find it hard to follow pregnancy planning advice.
“Nutrition and lifestyle recommendations for women considering pregnancy need better publicity and wider availability. Given that many pregnancies are unplanned we need to improve the nutrition and lifestyles of all women in their child-bearing years, and need their partners and society in general to support them in this.”
Original research paper: Women’s compliance with nutrition and lifestyle recommendations before pregnancy: general population cohort study published in BMJ 2009;338:b481
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