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Women often do not take folic acid until they are already pregnant. Experts urge women of childbearing age to take folic acid supplements even if they are not planning a family yet. A majority of women do know about the ability of folic acid to possibly prevent spina bifida – they wait until they’ve missed a period before they start taking folic acid supplements. Children born with spina bifida can be paralysed from the waist down and can suffer lifelong spinal cord, bowel and bladder problems, while some may even suffer from brain damage. The spinal cord develops within the first four weeks of pregnancy so by that stage its likely that if the baby is going to have spina bifida it will already have developed it.

While Scotland has the highest number of children born with spina bifida, women all around the world can benefit from taking the recommended 0.4mg (400 micrograms) of folic acid. To read more, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8232089.stm

Tags: folic acid

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 2:44 AM and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.