Folate & 7.30 Report

Not sure if this is the right place but as it relates to being pg I think its okay.

Did anyone else see the 7.30 report on the ABC last night about folate and how it can assist in preventing birth defects such as spinda bfida??

Nope sorry -;) but this was the first thing my GP and my midwives told me take all the way through this pg. Good luck!

Nope but i was taking folate before I fell pregnant so hopefully im covered lol folate=good that's all i need to know!

No I didn't watch it, but I started taking Elevit a month before I fell pregnant.

I didn't see it but I've been taking folate for about 6 months now.

i didnt but i know one thing i took folate 2 months before falling pregnant with my first pregnancy as well as right threw my pregnancy and my daughter was dignosed with spina bifita occullta . so i dont know if i was one of the unlucky ones or what but i dont know if i beleive it or not i try to for positive reasons . ive been taking it threw this pregnancy as well so touch wood everything will be fine this time find out in my 12 week ultrasound hopefully . i suppose i should be thankfull that my daughter has only one of the mild cases not over serious but i know one thing that my love for her will never change no matter what happens in the future i will always be there for her!!!

It helps reduce the risk it doesn't completely get rid of the chance. I think it helps reduce environmental factors but not hereditary?? I dunno how spina b works :(

I have my fingers crossed for bibbi and am glad to hear even though chanayah got it it's a mild form *hugs*

sugar i think i would know if there was a history of spina bifita in the family as my family is very big and close being maltese and on both sides there are no history of spina bifita my gp said that its gotto start somewhere doesnt always mean its in the family and also your suppose to take 5mgs of folate a day is the recomended dose i was taking 400mcg of folate but for pregnancy your suppose to take 5mgs dont ask me why but that was what i was told of my gp as well as a midwife.

Isn't 5 mgs a crazy amount? In the UK the reccomendation is at least 600mcg per day, but most prenatal vitamins contain 700-750mcg.

My friend previously had an anencephalic bubs and she takes 1mg a day for pregnancy (had 2 healthy bubs since then).

Fel, does your DD have symptoms? Many people don't even know they have occultta - my XP's BIL has it and has never had any symptoms other than a little hair and a dimple on his sacrum. You sound like a great mum, the way you talk about your love for her. :)

Hana

hoobley 5mgs are what i was told of my daughters neuro surgen as well 5mgs is the reccomended does for me cause of what happened with chanayah but the funny thing is iwas on that when i was pregnant with chanayah . chanayah was born with a small hole maybe the size of a pin head at the tip of her bottom crack at the time i had it checked out back then 2 days after she was born i was told that it wasnt deep enough to worry about . it wansnt untill six months ago she started complaining about pain in that area and then it had bleed on a few occasions so i had taken her to my gp wich refferd me to the childrens hospital at westmead after an xray and a mri scan thats when it had showed occulta in the L5 of the spine wich it explained chanayahs bladder and bowel problems as well as speach problems so unfortionatly chanayah has side affects.

I'm so sorry darlin. I hope her problems resolve as she grows. I'll bet despite her health worries she lights up your life, and she's lucky to have a mumma like you :)

THe speech thing is something there's a thread on just now...First Words i think it's called. Studies have shown that children who speak late often have very powerful analytical skills - you may well have a little genius there! My dad (who's an engineer) started talking in complete and complex sentences age 2+9 mos. Previously he had only grunted. LOL. Apparently (german jokey myth) Einstein didn't talk until he was 5.

I guess the 5mgs is due to your being in an at-risk of neural tube problems group? The obs in Aus are obviously following different guidelines than those in the UK. :)

Ladies, thanks for all your responses and this is my 2nd pg so I know all about folate (i take elevit) and its good to know you all do too :). It would appear that I didn't finish my post before i posted it ... sorry as I wanted to get your opinions on what you thought about having folate put into food products eg bread and I was hoping that someone else had seen the segment on tv?

The interview was about folate and featured a pg woman who was in a wheelchair and how if her parents had known more about folate she woudln't have been born with spina bfida. Hence why they want to put folate in foods that ppl consume to increase our levels.

I don't really agree with that as I think you'd need to eat a lot of bread to get enough folate on a daily basis :)!

EJ_1974, your last post changes the whole topic of this discussion quite a bit (and actually makes it even more interesting).
I for one would be against it as I think it is silly to "force-supplement" the whole population like that. I have a thing about everyone popping pills these days(and adding powders to our food supply is no different). Having said that, I do take a prenatal vitamin (elevit) but that is my choice and in general I try to get my vitamins from natural sources rather than artificial ones. I don't know if I make much sense, but I think that taking supplements should be an individual decision, just like any other medication and sneaking them into our food supply is an interference that I take offence to. I don't even like the idea of fluoride being added to our tap water.
The main reason for me being against it is that it doesn't stop with folate. If we get into a habit of doing that, every fad will end up in our food and it might even include some substances that might proof harmful later on. The other issue is that it might be easy to overdose on various vitamins as you might get them in say your bread, milk and then again in your breakfast cereal.
And another point is also that there are huge quality differences between one artificial vitamin and the other. So you don't have much control over what kind of quality you are ingesting. And they are never as good for you as they are if you get them from natural sources.
I guess, I want to be able to make informed choices.
And nowadays most women who are TTC know about the importance of folate and take it as soon as they find out they are pregnant or even before. Of course there is the problem with women who fall pregnant accidentally and don't realise before it is too late. But in those cases folate might not be the only problem. They might have been drinking and smoking and taking drugs, eating raw eggs, raw fish high in mercury, bla bla bla. Are we going to control that in the general population aswell, just in case???

Anyway, I get off my soapbox now ;) I hope I didn't offend anyone. I know spina bifida and anencephaly can be very serious (if not fatal) problems and I don't want to make light of these conditions. I just think that every woman has the right to choose what she puts in her body.

I take Blackmores pregnacy vitamin which has folate in it.

I don't agree with adding folate to bread. Mainly because I don't think bread is consumed widely enough (I know I hardly ever have it). And how much bread would you have to eat to get enough? I think education is better, making people aware of natural sources of folate or the option of taking a supplement.

There's still cases of spina bifida when mothers have taken folate anyway, so it's not a perfect solution.

Hmmm, I'm in the UK - we had Flouride in our tap water for a while! In fact i think we still do in some places. WHile it did improve dental health for some people, it actually caused some too. And all table salt is iodised to prevent iodine-deficient-goiter.

I think Folate is pretty harmless, even in large doses (we're not talking 2 or 3 loaves a day being consumed by one person right...). So from that point of view if it saves babies born to those who really didn't know about folate and didn't eat well throughout their pregnancy from having spina bifida and other neural tube defects and problems then i guess it's a good thing. BUT i think it is dangerous, instead of educating everyone in what a healthy diet is, what sort of foods a growing/pregnant/unwell body needs, and instead just putting supplements into junk food (i know bread isn't junk food realy but a diet which contains no sources of folate other than that added to bread is pretty unhealthy).

We should be educating people not just quietly taking the knowledge and the choice and giving it to bread companies, doctors etc. Solving problems this way, to me, leads in the direction of feeding all beef cattle steroids and antibiotics "just in case", which intensive farming sometimes does. I know farming is a seperate issue, and i totally support farmers, it's a difficult living to make. But i mean from the point of view that cattle can't make the decisions about when or where or what they eat or how they live, so they can't make the grazing choices the would if they were wild. This limit leads them to become ill/grow badly and that has to be treated. If we don't educate people and give them a choice the knowledge will be lost to the general population.

There are already so many women i know who think birth is a death sentence unless you're in hospital, with a doctor, hooked up to the machines and having surgery. A youngish (19 or 20) girl in my baby clinic actually said to me "you had a VAGINAL birth? I thought everyone just got c-sections nowadays" Her son was born by c-section because he was breech, but whoever had explained it had left her with the distinct impression that everyone had surgery.

We're losing touch with our bodies and what they need.

thanks for all your comments on this and I definitely think one should have the choice of what they consume not what someone else decides we should.
And education really is the key to changning behaviour.
See you all soon