Lack of Vitamin B12 during pregnancy, the child's cognitive impairment! Pregnant mothers must eat enough meat, eggs, and milk!
Lack of Vitamin B12 during pregnancy, the child's cognitive impairment! Pregnant mothers must eat enough meat, eggs, and milk!
Lack of vitamin B 12 during pregnancy, the child's cognition is impaired
Pregnant women have to eat enough meat, eggs, and milk
Nutritional balance during pregnancy is very important. Once there is a lack of nutritional elements, it will easily affect the health of the fetus. Nowadays, most women preparing for pregnancy know that taking folic acid is essential for the healthy development of the fetus, but they don’t know much about vitamin B12. Recently, scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK published a study in the journal Nutrition Research that if the mother's intake of vitamin B 12 during pregnancy is insufficient, the child’s childhood language and mathematics development may be affected.
Insufficient vitamin B 12 intake during pregnancy
Affect children's language and math abilities
Vitamin B 12 is also known as cobalamin, a substance found in seafood, dairy products and meat products. Vitamin B 12 is an essential nutrient that the human body cannot synthesize by itself. Most of it is stored in the liver, which is about 80% of the total body storage. The rest is found in muscles, skin and bone tissues, and a small amount is found in the lungs, kidneys, and spleen. Vitamin B 12 helps keep the body's nerves and blood cells healthy, is an important substance required for bone marrow hematopoiesis, and helps to make the genetic material DNA in all cells. It is also the basic coenzyme factor for many enzymes or biocatalysts, which enable thousands of chemical reactions in the human body to proceed smoothly. Normal adults need 2 to 5 micrograms of vitamin B 12 every day .
The research team of Professor Jean Golding of the University of Bristol collected the dietary information of nearly 14,000 pregnant women, followed their children for many years, and tested their cognitive abilities at various points in time. The results showed that children born to women with the lowest vitamin B 12 intake were at increased risk of poor vocabulary at 24 months, decreased ability to combine words at 38 months, and poor language comprehension at the age of 6. The understanding of mathematics concepts is poor at the age of 8-9 and 10-11, and the mathematics test results are poor at the age of 13 (the mathematics results are specific to the reasoning part, not the calculation ability).
Lack of vitamin B 12 during pregnancy
Offspring are susceptible to diabetes
Researchers at the University of Warwick School of Medicine in the United Kingdom have found that if a woman lacks vitamin B 12 during pregnancy , her offspring may be susceptible to metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Studies have found that babies born to mothers with vitamin B 12 deficiency have higher than normal leptin levels. This means that the lack of vitamin B 12 in pregnant women changes the level of leptin during fetal growth. Leptin is secreted by fat cells in the body, and its level rises when eating. Obesity will increase the level of leptin, which will increase the risk of overeating and insulin resistance, which will eventually lead to type 2 diabetes.
The data also shows that low vitamin B 12 levels can impair the metabolism of fat cells, which may lead to increased fat accumulation, impaired fat metabolism, and inflammatory damage, all of which can lead to weight gain. These findings emphasize the importance of long-term consumption of foods rich in vitamin B 12 by pregnant women to prevent obesity and its related adverse health complications.
Vegan lactating mother
Also need to supplement vitamin B12
Golding said: “If pregnant women consume low levels of vitamin B 12, it may have an adverse effect on the child’s neurocognitive development specific to certain language and math abilities. Vitamin B 12 is naturally present in animal products, including Fish, livestock, poultry, eggs, milk, and dairy products are generally not found in plant foods. Therefore, women with low vitamin B 12 intake may have low intake of animal protein." Therefore, women During pregnancy, eat more animal protein in moderation. When pregnant women are severely deficient in vitamin B 12 due to some special reasons , they can take vitamin supplements under the advice of a doctor.
The American Dietetic Association recommends that women who are vegetarians during pregnancy and breastfeeding require vitamin B 12 supplementation . Benito, director of Atlantic Maternal and Fetal Medicine at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey, USA, believes that breastfeeding mothers of vegetarians lack vitamin B 12, and their infants may also have very limited vitamin B 12 reserves, which will occur within a few months after birth lack of.
