Diet advice can be difficult to stick to<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Liu, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at National Jewish Health, in Denver, calls the findings "intriguing."<\/p>\n
"It's logical," says Dr. Liu. "This would not benefit every child, but if you already have a food-allergic child in the family, this could be helpful. This kind of avoidance may help kids who are already at high risk for food allergies and asthma, even before they're born."<\/p>\n
However, the study's lead author, Velencia Soutter, MBBS, a pediatrician at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, in Sydney, says that the diet advice used in the study can be difficult to stick to. "While it's probably too hard for most people, parents who already have a child with an allergy have the choice to reduce the risk of particular food allergies in their next child," she says.<\/p>\n
In the second study, researchers in Norway measured the folate levels of about 2,000 pregnant women during their second trimester. Compared to the children of the moms with the lowest levels, the children of the women with the highest folate levels were more likely to have symptoms of asthma at age 3.<\/p>\n
Folate is the naturally occurring form of folic acid, a B vitamin. Because folic acid is believed to reduce the risk of brain- and spinal-related birth defects, most experts recommend that pregnant women take prenatal vitamins with 400 micrograms of folic acid every day before pregnancy and during early pregnancy.<\/p>\n
In the United States, folate is also found in green, leafy vegetables and fortified foods such as breads, cereals, and other grain products. In Norway, however, the food supply is not fortified with folic acid.<\/p>\n
"We may be overdoing folic acid," says Ivana Yang, PhD, an assistant professor of genetics at National Jewish Health. (Yang was not involved in the new study.)<\/p>\n
"The dose that was picked for pregnant woman to avoid neural tube defects was arbitrary," she says. "If it has to be this high to prevent neural tube defects, then asthma is something we have to deal with. But all of our food is also fortified with folic acid, so we're taking crazy amounts if we add it all up."<\/p>\n
Experts aren't exactly sure how too much folic acid during pregnancy could lead children to develop asthma. "It may be that it modifies your genetic material, which may decrease expression of certain genes and set the stage for the development of asthma," Yang explains.<\/p>\n
More research is needed before the folic acid recommendations are changed, she adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Getty Images) By Denise Mann SUNDAY, Feb. 28, 2010 (Health.com) — As if mothers-to-be don't have enough to worry about, new research suggests that eating certain foods during pregnancy or while breast-feeding may raise the baby's risk of allergies and asthma later in life. The good news is that if women—particularly those in allergy-prone families—avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,34],"tags":[110,37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}