Worried about Vitamin D and Pregnancy?
Findings show that women who have high dosages of vitamin D have less complications and risks during pregnancies.
A study comparing different amounts of supplements in expecting mothers have deemed high dosages of vitamin D in pregnancy as safe in reducing pregnancy risks. These reduced risks include preterm births, infections, as well as gestational diabetes.
The authors of the study recommend that pregnant women should ingest 10 times the usual recommended amount of vitamin D, resulting in a total of 4,000 IU (international units) of vitamin D daily. 494 pregnant women were included in this study, with a third of them receiving 4,000 IU of vitamin D, another third receiving 2,000 IU, and the last group receiving 400 IU.
These women were randomly selected to each group, resulting in an unbiased study. These women who ingested the 4,000 IU supplements in their second and third trimesters showed no adverse effects, but they did find that they had fewer infections, pre-term labours or pre-term birth deliveries in comparison to the group of women who only received 400 IU of vitamin D.
Further analysis of the data indicated that the women with the high dosage of vitamin D had their risk of pregnancy complications cut in half. There has been some controversy in ingesting such high amounts of vitamin D supplements, however, there is no proof that vitamin D supplementation is harmful, even at extremely high levels greater than 10,000 IU.
In other words, women who had the highest levels of vitamin D supplements were least at risk of having pregnancy complications in comparison to those with lower amounts. These women with high vitamin D levels also had babies with less likelihood of having vitamin D deficiency.