subject: Prenatal Exercise - Healthy Pregnancy Tip: Supplements To Avoid [print this page] Prenatal vitamins are an essential source of folate and other essential nutrients during pregnancy. And many women, with the popularity of herbal medicine, use other herbs throughout pregnancy. These women may have been taking some of these herbs before for an existing condition. Other women, they may use to assist cope with some of the physical troubles that accompany pregnancy. The following supplements and food additives ought to be refrained throughout pregnancy to prevent possible complications with the health of the baby.
Quinine - Quinine is found in many drinks like tonic water, and these are well-known as a result of their slightly bitter taste. However it was found that one woman who drunk a lot more than 1 liter of tonic water daily while she was pregnant, had a baby who was suffering withdrawal symptoms when it was born. It had nervous tremors in a day of being born, which disappeared 2 months later. Germany's BfR (Federal Institute for Risk Assessment) recommends that pregnant women treat quinine drinks, no matter how small the amount of quinine in them, as a medicinal item, and avoid them as a precaution during pregnancy.
Ginseng- One of the more than 20 active constituents of ginseng was found by researchers at the Chinese University of the Hong Kong Prince of Wales Hospital to be a possible cause for problem for pregnant women.
One of the problems with studying active constituents in herbal medicine is the fact that the whole herbal extract may have a very different general impact than a single constituent. This is because of the way active principles both work together and counteract one another. These 2 aspects, the fact that the study was not performed on humans, and doesn't gauge the overall impact of the whole ginseng extract, imply that its outcomes ought to be treated carefully. As a safety precaution, at this moment, it's best to at least stay away from ginseng supplements during the first trimester, as the authors of the research suggest, and most likely for the entire of the pregnancy. But ginseng should certainly not be branded harmful as a result of this study as it's only a very preliminary finding in the overall picture, and much more points the way as to where further study needs to be completed.
Ginkgo Biloba- Ginkgo biloba is another supplement that is best avoided while pregnant. Researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit discovered one of the constituents of ginkgo biloba in the placenta of women who had taken ginkgo supplements. This specific constituent, an alkaloid called colchicine, could be fatal in high doses, though medicinally, it has great anti-inflammatory effects. Other study has discovered that cochicine can hurt a growing fetus. The potential trouble with taking ginkgo supplements on a regular basis whilst pregnant is that colchicine can accumulate in the womb, just like caffeine when taken excessively of the recommended highest possible amounts. The researchers did stress that there was no link proven in the study between ginkgo and complications in the pregnancy, the study just looked at levels of colchicine in the womb.
