Starting healthy eating after conceiving may be a waste —Experts

It is common to hear women being encouraged to eat well once they are pregnant to ensure they have a healthy baby. In fact, some purposely go out of their way to include a variety of food items into their diet. But choice of diet while trying to get pregnant is just as important as when pregnant, to boost fertility, lower risk of birth defects like spina bifida and to transition to a smoother pregnancy.

There have been several studies that show that diet before a woman gets pregnant could be associated with preterm birth as well as low birth weight (LBW) in babies. Preterm babies have a higher risk of death during the neonatal period and infancy.

A healthy varied diet is important both before conception and during pregnancy. According to Professor Adetunji Adeniji, consultant obstetrics and gynaecologist, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State, the outcome of any pregnancy is dependent on the woman’s pre-pregnancy well being and pre-pregnancy weight.

According to him, “if a woman, for example, has a weight before her pregnancy that is less than 50 kg, it is associated with very bad outcome in pregnancy such as low birth weight, premature delivery and preterm convulsion.

“Similarly, the nutrients value of eating well also contribute to the prevention of some birth defects. For example, if a woman for any reason has a folic acid deficiency, the baby is predisposed to having spinal cord abnormalities such as spinal bifida, where the brain and spinal cord do not form properly.”

Professor Adeniji declared that starting a healthier diet after the baby had been conceived may be too late, because babies are fully formed by the end of the first trimester.

“Also, most times, people don’t even know that they are pregnant in the first eight weeks of pregnancy. The first eight weeks, which is known as the formative age of any baby will have passed before she even realises that and by then she cannot correct anything. That is why it is always good that women in adolescents eat healthily.” he added.

Women who are underweight or overweight, or who have deficiencies in particular micronutrients rarely “catch-up” by improving their diet once they are pregnant, as at this stage their body already faces additional nutritional demands because of the growing baby.

Nonetheless, he declared that some of the problems that may occur due to poor diet before women get pregnant should have been identified and corrected if hospitals in Nigeria offer women preconception care as they do for women already pregnant.

At preconception clinic, abnormalities that could impact fertility and healthy babies, including nutritional deficiencies and diseases such as hypertension and diabetes is corrected appropriately before conception.

Dr Oluwaseun Ariyo at the Department of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Ibadan, said since many women don’t even know that they are pregnant in the first six to eight weeks of pregnancy, ensuring adolescents and women of childbearing ages eat healthily was important to ensure that their health is not a barrier to the adequate development of an unborn baby.

He declared that the intake of iron and folic acid supplement is also advised in adolescent girls and women of childbearing ages due to the high prevalence of anaemia in many developing countries, Nigeria inclusive.

Presently, the WHO recommended intermittent iron-folic acid supplement be instituted for adolescent girls in countries where anaemia prevalence is more than 40 per cent. Organisations such as UNICEF are already piloting the project, iron-folic supplements for adolescent girls, in some states in the North.

Severe anaemia during pregnancy increases your risk of premature birth, having a low birth weight baby and postpartum depression. Some studies also show an increased risk of infant death immediately before or after birth.

Dr Ariyo added that alongside the intake of a healthy diet, physical activity and avoidance of alcohol and smoking is also essential to ensure healthy pregnancy.

Meanwhile,  a group of researchers who studied diet prior to becoming pregnant in Austrian women found that high consumption of vegetables, including carrots, pumpkin and cabbage before conception helped women reach full-term pregnancy. They experienced fewer cases of preterm births.

The study assessed live births from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) to analyse preterm birth and low birth weights (LBW) in relation to a pre-pregnancy diet. It included women who were nulliparous and nonpregnant at baseline surveys and used factor analyses and the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) scores to derive maternal dietary patterns.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the authors wrote that greater adherence to the traditional vegetables pattern before pregnancy “was associated with a lower risk of preterm birth and spontaneous preterm birth after adjustments for lifestyle factors and pregnancy complications.”

Also, there is growing evidence from other studies that a woman’s diet and weight, at the time of conception, can rewire a baby’s brain for obesity.

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