Only one in four Australian pregnant women adhere to folic acid and iodine guidelines

Only one-in-four Australian pregnant women adhere to folic acid and iodine guidelines. This article goes on to state that “in Australia the recommended nutrients for supplementation are folic acid and iodine!”

But my questions are … what about the other trace elements? Are those other trace elements less important? What happens when you supplement with iodine alone? Does it compromise the status of other essential minerals? What about folic acid as a single supplement? Despite it’s proven ability to reduce the incidence of neural tube defects, folic acid is part of the B-complex group of vitamins. It never occurs alone in Nature and should always be given with its supporting fellows which all work together. But there’s more, in the general population, 34 variations of the MTHFR (methylene-tetrahydrofolate-reductase) gene have been identified - these individuals cannot metabolise synthetic folic acid! 

I raise these questions because the studies that take one nutrient and show how important it is during pregnancy are completely meaningless. The reality is ... all the trace elements, vitamins, essential fatty acids, amino acids and various co-factors are important! In addition, ensuring you and your partner enjoy optimal nutritional status (that’s nutrition obtained from whole foods grown on healthy soil, supported by robust, comprehensive supplements that take into account specific metabolic anomalies), before you conceive and maintaining that status during pregnancy and during breastfeeding will do more for your baby’s intelligence, birthweight and everything else, than supplementing with single nutrients in isolation!

How much Vitamin D for babies?

While there’s no question that breastmilk is the perfect food and drink, it’s long been recognised that it provides insufficient Vitamin D for the baby. When you consider that a significant number of pregnant women are deficient in Vitamin D, it’s a completely logical finding. So if you’re a breastfeeding mum you’ll be interested in this study confirming the high doses of Vitamin D supplementation required to ensure your infant gets a minimum of 400IU/daily.  Unfortunately the recommendation of a short daily “sun bath” for babies has gone the way of a good deal of other grandmotherly wisdom. This recommendation, which I know my own mother heeded (probably beginning my life-long love affair with the sun) was firmly put to bed with the scare campaign about the damage of sun exposure and the risk of skin cancer. If you feel uncomfortable about exposing your baby’s delicate skin to the sun, here’s the recommendations for either your own regular sun exposure and/or supplementation while breastfeeding. If you’re planning a baby or already pregnant, I’ve included the recommendations for Vitamin D supplementation for you too. You might be surprised by the doses required - very significantly higher than many commonly available supplements! Here’s the word from researchers at GrassRootsHealth, whose work now spans more than three decades, on the required dosages and for a continuing appropriate relationship between your skin and the sun. These apply to Australian latitudes. In colder climates (higher latitudes) supplementation is the only way to achieve appropriate status.

Minimize UVA while allowing UVB

10-15 minutes exposure/day between 10:00 am and 2:00 pm (between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm during daylight saving)

Expose 40 percent of skin area

Ensure it’s a clear day without pollution

If this isn’t possible, use oral D3 supplements to achieve 40-60ng/ml (100-150nMols/L)

Vitamin D Recommendations Update for Preconception, Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

Dose for adults: 1 drop (I,000IU) 1 to 2 times daily. 

Dose for preconception: 2 drops (2,000 IU) daily.

Dose for pregnancy: 4 drops (4,000 IU) daily

Dose for breastfeeding: 6,400IU daily

The only way to get Vitamin D3 in breast milk is by dosing daily - either by sun, diet or supplementation. The latest research of Grassrootshealth and Dr. Bruce Hollis, Professor of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina indicates that 6,400 IU/day is necessary for breast feeding mothers to attain sufficient vitamin D (to the value of 400 IU/day for the infant) in their breast milk. 

For the best products for preconception, pregnancy and breastfeeding check my new 10-part webinar series. Click here to watch the free intro.

Sweet But Deadly Poison

Eighty years ago, my Scottish grandmother was advised by a naturopath to avoid refined sugar if she wanted to live a long and healthy life. In his view, it was a sweet but deadly poison. My own mother, as a consequence was raised on a whole, mostly raw food diet. Mum, Dad my sister and I ate the same, so I grew up with a solid understanding that sugar was bad for me. 

About the same time that my grandmother was consulting her naturopath, Dr. Weston Price, a dentist studied communities around the world, linking declining physical and mental health to a change from their traditional whole food diets to Western-influenced ones, which were high in white flour and refined sugar. His seminal volume “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” is still a bible for clinical nutritionists. It’s almost thirty five years since I finished my own studies in Clinical Nutrition - sugar as the bad guy was never in any doubt and for thirty years I’ve been advising preconception couples to get rid of sugar-containing products from their diet!

Yet despite a mass of sugar-related studies and practical wisdom, in recent decades sugar as the bad guy has been overlooked or forgotten. Perhaps, more insidiously, those revealing studies have been sidelined by vested interests. Concurrently, the flawed recommendations that fat is actually the bad guy have been front and centre, eclipsing sugar’s bad reputation. 

Now with the nonsense surrounding fat and heart disease exposed as just that, the pendulum will finally swing back towards consumption of healthy fats. So it’s also time to explore exactly how sugar exerts its damaging effects. While the knowledge of those effects is not new to many, the mode of action is now becoming clear. Rather than neurons in the brain passively taking up sugar (which has long been the understanding) scientists say the glial cells, which make up ninety percent of the brain, but which have also been misunderstood as mere support cells, actively seek out sugar molecules for take-up!

A better understanding of how this works, of why we get hungry, of why we crave sweet foods, of how sugar affects our mood and much more, could change everything! It certainly highlights the vitally important recommendations to get rid of sugar from your diet if you want to lose weight, improve physical and mental performance and reduce the likelihood of chronic degenerative diseases such as diabetes!