Omega-3 fatty acids, in particular DHA, help a pregnant woman give her developing baby every advantage in life starting in-utero. In general the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish help the cardiovascular system, the brain (including moods), and even the brain and eyes of a developing baby. Yet only about 68% of women know about the benefits of DHA, an essential fatty acid. More than two-thirds of women say their doctor has never told them anything about DHA, and 72% have no idea how to get DHA into their diet.
Consumer DHA consumption is well below recommended amounts in the United States and the United Kingdom, and is only a little better in Australia and Canada. Yet still the consumption in these countries is not even half of the consumption of DHA in Japan or Norway where fish and seafood are eaten regularly.
Neglecting to supplement the diet with DHA is risky for infant neurological development while in-utero because so much of the brain and eyes are made up of omega-3 fatty acids, specifically DHA. Babies of mothers who were deficient in DHA while pregnant performed more poorly on vision tests than babies of mothers who supplemented with DHA. The vision test measures the babies' ability to differentiate between the width of lines.
The risk of pre-term delivery and low birth weight is three and a half times higher when mothers are deficient in DHA.Premature babies (preemies) are prone to have many health problems including high risk of eye and brain damage, and some need speech therapy as they grow older. Advances in newborn medical care have greatly reduced the frequency of deaths related to low birth weight. However, of those who survive, a small percentage may develop mental retardation, learning problems, cerebral palsy, and vision and hearing loss.In the year 2005, pre-term births nationwide represented 12.7% of all births.That's about a half a million premature babies a year.
There are many different reasons for a premature birth, and not all of them are within the mothers' control, so it is impossible to say that simply supplementing with prenatal vitamins and omega-3s are enough to prevent one. However, within the list of causes that are in a mothers' control, such as lifestyle choices, a proper diet and supplementation is the first line of defense. Mothers who supplement with fish oil tend to have longer pregnancies by about four days than those who are deficient in DHA.
Unfortunately, low birth weight is now known to be associated with increased adult rates of coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension and non-insulin dependent diabetes. Preventing disease really does start in the womb. Also consider that the womb is where the baby learns how life on the outside might be. If the mother is poorly nourished she signals to her unborn baby that the environment it is about to enter will probably be harsh. The baby responds to these signals by adaptations, such as reduced body size and altered metabolism, which help it to survive a shortage of food after birth, but which also set the stage for health problems later on in life.
Conversely, the higher the child's blood level of omega-3, as determined by the supplement the mother took while pregnant, the better eye-hand coordination the child may possess. It is more likely that language and motor skills and problem-solving ability will be more strongly developed in children whose mothers' levels of DHA were high. One small scale double blind study found that the babies of women who were given DHA supplements in functional food during the last trimester of pregnancy could out-perform other babies in problem solving tests at nine months of age. Curiously, there was no difference between the test and control groups in tests of memory, but DHA-rich babies could find a toy hidden under a cloth more often than the babies of moms in the control group.
During prenatal development, the fetus takes all available DHA if the mother is deficient. That leaves nothing left over for the mother. Nutritional science studies point to a correlation between low levels of omega-3s and depression in people. A pregnant or lactating woman has higher needs for omega-3 with current recommendations at 300 milligrams per day for intake of DHA. To compare numbers, consider that the average non-pregnant Japanese woman consumes 571 milligrams per day of DHA.
Doctors have taken detailed diet diaries of women during pregnancy and found that those who develop gestational diabetes tend to eat more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s.Omega-6 fats are found in many common vegetable oils. In Western countries omega-6 intake well exceeds the recommended levels, and the median intake of omega-3 is well below recommended amounts. There is evidence that DHA modulates insulin resistance! Those prone to gestational diabetes are strongly urged to replace omega-6 fats with omega-3s.
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