PreConceptional Counseling: Prenatal Vitamins

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• 0:04Why prenatal vitamins matter
• 0:27Folic acid and neural tube defects
• 1:11Choosing a prenatal vitamin

Full transcript

1. 0:04Why prenatal vitamins matter

   Hi ladies, I'm Dr. Taz Varkey. Welcome to GynoTalks. Today I want to focus on the importance of preconception counseling, specifically the importance of prenatal vitamins. So prenatal vitamins contain a very important element called folic acid. There are many minerals and vitamins in a prenatal vitamin that are important, but the most important one is folic acid.

2. 0:27Folic acid and neural tube defects

   Folic acid is important because there are many studies that have shown that if a woman starts folic acid at least one, ideally three, months before pregnancy, it will help to reduce the risk of something called neural tube defects. The neural tube is the part of the baby, the embryo, that forms into the spinal cord.

3. 0:49

   So if there's a defect in the neural tube, there can be an abnormality in the brain or anywhere along the spinal cord, and this can obviously be very, very serious for a newborn baby. So this is a simple thing we can do to prevent the chance of this happening. As I said, you want to start the vitamin at least one month ahead of time, but ideally even up to three months ahead.

4. 1:11Choosing a prenatal vitamin

   This is not something you need a prescription for. There are many prenatal vitamins over the counter. There's so many brands, I can't even name them. There are prescription ones available, but to be honest, most times it doesn't really make a difference, so you can just go to your local drugstore and pick up any prenatal vitamin and start it right away.

5. 1:33

   Even if you're not trying to get pregnant, it's not going to hurt you to take it. It's very similar to a general woman's multivitamin; it just has different concentrations of some of the vitamins that we couldn't give a pregnant woman. So that's it, I just wanted you to know about that. Please make sure you talk to your doctor about any other things you can do to optimize the health of your pregnancy. This is not the only thing. Thank you for listening, and don't forget to subscribe.