Women Are Careless With Pre-Pregnancy Diet

Prenatal

oi-Staff

By Staff

Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 10:41

A new study has revealed that it is as important for women to take care of their health before pregnancy as it is during pregnancy . However, not many women oblige to the nutrition and lifestyle advice given to them.

The researchers noticed that a very few women who later got pregnant actually took up the advice for folic acid intake and alcohol recommendation. For their study about 12,445 non-pregnant women aged 20-34 between 1998 and 2002 were interviewed. It was to check how many of these women obeyed the dietary advice given to them. Out of these women, 238 became pregnant within three months of the interview.

About 23 percent of the 238 women that got pregnant did not expect the pregnancy in the next 12 months. In the unplanned group only one of the women took the given advice seriously but among the remainder, who were, in some sense, 'planning' a pregnancy, the percentage was only slightly higher at 3.3pct.

As reported by the British medical journal, it was more likely for women who got pregnant to comply with alcohol consumption than those who were not pregnant. It was found that only 2.9 pct of the women were observing the daily dose of 400g of folic acid and drinking and consuming only four units of alcohol per week, as compared to 0.66 percent that was not pregnant.

However, the authors have mentioned that the above mentioned data displayed only limited changes in the health manners pre-pregnancy.AGENCIES

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