Food Supplements to Avoid For a Healthy Pregnancy
Taking in vitamins is very essential during pregnancy. This is because the food that you eat may not be enough for your baby’s development. Along with the popularity of herbal medicines and supplements, many pregnant women prefer to take herbs as they may have been used to taking them even before they got pregnant.
Others take herbs not only as food supplement but also as medication to the difficulties that they may be experiencing. However, you should bear in mind that some herbs and food additives can be dangerous to you and your baby. Some of these are as follows:
1. Quinine – This is usually an additive to tonic water, which makes its taste slightly bitter. There had been a case where a woman gave birth to a baby who suffered from withdrawal symptoms.
The mother had been drinking more than one liter of tonic water per day when she was pregnant. The baby had nervous tremors when he was born but disappeared after two months. Experts recommend that drinks containing quinine should be avoided by pregnant women.
2. Ginseng – Researchers conducted a study on the effect of ginseng to the development of fetus in rats. Results of the study showed that the development of the rat embryo was greatly affected by the intake of ginseng. The higher the dose, the greater the abnormalities were found out.
Although the study was applied on rats, the effects can be similar to humans. The study only focused on the effects of one of the many active constituents of ginseng, which is the Rb1, a ginsenoside. Ginseng has more than 20 ginsenoside and results of studies conducted showed different effects on the fetus.
The fact that the individual constituents of ginseng have bad effects on the fetus means that … READ MORE ...