This just in: 800 micrograms of folic acid (a B-vitamin) appears to help memory and may prevent age-related decline in mental function.
This isn’t the only benefit of folic acid, though. It also helps prevent heart attacks and treat depression, epilepsy, and a variety of other conditions.
It’s also known that women who take folic acid have fewer children with spina bifida and related birth defects. The method of action that produces this is not known, however. (It may help the child develop so that it doesn’t get the defect–or it may increase the miscarriage rate for children with the defect. Nobody knows for sure.) And so (unlike the U.S. government) I can’t recommend that all women of childbearing age simply take it.
If you’re a guy, though, or a woman not likely to become pregnant, folic acid may be a useful nutritional tool.
GET MY FAVORITE NUTRITIONAL THERAPY BOOK.
I had read just the opposite in regards to pregnant women: a lack of folic acid can result in spina bifida.
“It’s also known that women who take folic acid have children with spina bifida and related birth defects.”
WHAT?????????
Recommended dosage of folic acid for pregnant women is about 600 mcg.
You need to fix this line: “It’s also known that women who take folic acid have children with spina bifida and related birth defects.”
Shouldn’t it be “It’s also known that children born of women who take folic acid while pregnant have reduced risk of spina bifida and related birth defects.”
here’s from the link:
“The U.S. Public Health Service recommends that all women of childbearing age in the U.S. consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily to reduce their risk of having a baby affected with spina bifida or other neural tube defects. This is one of the few health claims allowed by the FDA for nutritional supplementation. The FDA determined 400 micrograms of folic acid daily to be an optimal dose for the prevention of neural tube defects. Those women who already have had a child with a neural tube defect require higher doses.”
Of course they recommend the same dose for 18 year olds pregnant for the first time as they do for 40 year olds pregnant with #6, which makes no sense to me, but it is safe in larger doses according to my nutritionist friend who teaches physiology at a Purdue extension in Ft. Wayne. She was also a consultant for Couple to Couple League for years, and author of ‘Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition’ (by Marilyn Shannon) The key is to take the supplements BEFORE conception.
Editing glitched fixed: “women who take folic acid have *fewer* children with spina bifida.”
It may help the child develop so that it doesn’t get the defect–or it may increase the miscarriage rate for children with the defect. Nobody knows for sure.
Egads! That possibility never occurred to me.
Remind me again, what’s the stuff that’s good for memory loss?
My wife’s doctor always recommends folic acid suuplements for pregnancy. So don’t worry Jimmy, you don’t have to worry about recommending it, the doctors will!
Two questions about this statement:
“(It may help the child develop so that it doesn’t get the defect–or it may increase the miscarriage rate for children with the defect. Nobody knows for sure.)”
1) Wouldn’t double effect kick in and make it OK if the second hypothesis is correct? Or do I have that backward?
2) Should one act on an unproven hypothesis? I have a hypothesis that reading your books can cause “Mass Confusion.” Does that mean that I should not read your books? 🙂
So what are the moral aspects then? Can one follow the normal advice and take Folic Acid? or now do you have to hold off due to a serious dubium?
you have a certainty that it can prevent neurological disorders, and an uncertainty of a relation to miscarriages, so I’d go with the certainty.
Jimmy, did you get that “may increase miscarriages” information from somewhere? Or did you just think it up?
I recognize that it is a possibility given the way people talk about “reducing risk” these days, but if you’re going to say something like that please give us a source or tell us you don’t have one. That is a serious allegation you’re making, since everyone I know of child-bearing age (including myself) takes folic acid to prevent neural-tube disorders.
Forgot what I was going to say…
There were some studies in the past that suggested that high folic acid may increase miscarriages. Nowadays studies suggest the opposite that folic acid actually reduces miscarriages.
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/52/49968.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1528244.stm
To follow-up on “increase the miscarriage rate”:
What are the actual rates? If the rate was 1 in 1 billion (totally made up number) and folic acid increased it to 2 in 1 billion, the risk would double. Yet the overall rate is incredibly low that for all intents and purposes, the risk is nil.
If the rate went from 1 in 100, to 1 in 50, then I would want to contemplate the numbers before making a decision.
Our midwife calls it “baby glue” and recommends it for healthy pregnancies.
+J.M.J+
I took perscription prenatal vitamins containing 1 mg of folic acid daily during my pregnancies and did not miscarry (no spina bifida either).
In Jesu et Maria
From UNSW Embryo- Development- Folic Acid and Neural Tube Defects
DATA SOURCES: We selected English language articles via MEDLINE published from January 1990 through February 1997, using the search terms “folic acid” and “neural tube defect.” Additional sources were identified through cross-referencing and through searching selected journals published from March through October 1997. METHODS OF STUDY SELECTION: Articles were selected on the basis of their relevance to the relationship between folate intake and NTD incidence, mechanisms of folate responsive NTD formation, and folate provision strategy. We referenced 55 papers in total. TABULATION, INTEGRATION, AND RESULTS: The majority of evidence demonstrates a decreased incidence of NTDs with increased folic acid consumption. The most convincing trials were performed in Europe among women who were planning pregnancy by using multivitamin or folic acid supplements. Some studies suggest that the protective effect of folate is explained, in many cases, not through correction of dietary deficiencies, but through correction of metabolic defects. Other evidence implies that it reduces NTDs by causing abortion of affected conceptuses. (emphasis added)
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