Pregnancy Over 40, Use Vitamin E With Caution
Although I took vitamin E while I was trying to conceive, I only took one prenatal vitamin per day while I was pregnant.Here is an article that discusses a newly discovered danger to an unborn baby if the mother took vitamin E while pregnant. Read more:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who've just become pregnant may want to watch how much vitamin E they take in. It seems that high levels of vitamin E early in pregnancy may increase the risk of the baby being born with a heart defect, according to a Dutch research team.
They studied 276 mothers of children born with heart defects and 324 "control" mothers whose babies were free of heart defects.
SEE ALSO: FOODS FOR FERTILITY AND PREGNANCY (getpregnantover40.com)
When their infants were 16 months old, the mothers completed food frequency questionnaires for the 4 weeks prior to the study. According to the researchers, dietary patterns during this time are similar to those before the women became pregnant.The likelihood of having a baby with a heart defect was 70 percent higher for women with the highest vitamin E intake from diet alone, compared to those with the lowest intake, the investigators found.
Moreover, high dietary vitamin E intake plus the use of a supplement containing vitamin E increased the risk of congenital heart defects 5- to 9-fold, Dr. R. P. M. Steegers-Theunissen at University Medical Center, Rotterdam, and colleagues report in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The researchers point out that high levels of vitamin E "may imbalance the oxidant/antioxidant state" in embryonic tissues.
from:
www.reuters.com
