Multivitamins in Pregnancy Reduce Risk of Low Birthweight

A new study has shown that taking whole food multivitamins while pregnant can help reduce the risk of having a low-birthweight baby. While iron and folic acid supplementation is recommended by most doctors for pregnant women, replacing these with a multivitamin which contains the two could have more broad spectrum health benefits. Pregnancy is a time of massively increased demands on your nutrient stores, and taking natural whole food multivitamins has been shown by two recent studies to have benefits.

Whole food multivitamin study 1

One study was done at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, led by Dr. Prakash Shah. It showed through synthesized results of 15 other worldwide studies that micronutrient supplementation helps prevent low birthweight over iron-folic acid supplements alone. The study showed that around 1.5 million babies born every year could have significantly higher birth weight if their mothers had taken a prenatal whole food multivitamin. However, the authors did note that the variability in study conditions limited the results somewhat, including the composition of micronutrient whole food multivitamins, timing of the supplementation, characteristics of the study participants and duration of the studies.

Whole food multivitamin study 2

The other study was a randomized trila by Piyush Gupta of University College of Medical Sciences in Delhi. It involved 200 women between 24 and 32 weeks at the beginning of the trial, who were either underweight or had low hemoglobin. Around half of the women received a calcium placebo, while the other half received a capsule with a combination of 29 micronutrients daily. Babies of the mothers who took whole food multivitamins weighed almost 100 grams more on average, and were almost a half-inch longer. The mothers, previously malnourished, also gained more weight during pregnancy (by around a pound).

Why do we care about low birthweight?

Babies who have a lower than average birthweight are more susceptible to a range of illnesses throughout their lives … despite a common conception by mothers that smaller babies hurt less during delivery, there is actually far more benefit in having an average or high birth weight baby.

Low-birthweight babies have been shown to be more susceptible to respiratory illness for the entire term of their lives, blindness, cerebral palsy, SIDS and kidney problems. Worth taking an organic whole food multivitamin for, certainly!