Dietary tip a lifesaver
RAISING YOUR FIBRE INTAKE DURING PREGNANCY CAN HAVE HUGE BENEFITS FOR YOU AND YOUR BUB
SCIENTISTS have found increasing your intake of fibre during pregnancy can reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia.
Plus, the baby is less likely to be premature and less likely to have allergies.
Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at Sydney University, Ralph Nanan, was the senior author of the study.
“Just imagine the impact on cost and quality of life by preventing both pre-eclampsia and allergies with an easy dietary intervention,” he said.
Pre-eclampsia is a dangerous complication that can happen after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Liver and kidney function can be damaged and if the condition escalates, the mother can have seizures and die. The only way to treat pre-eclampsia is by delivering the baby, resulting in 5–8 per cent of preterm deliveries in Australia.
The babies born to mothers with pre-eclampsia tend to have more allergies than those from normal pregnancies.
Prof Nanan’s team looked at the 18–21-week scans of nearly 1000 pregnancies.
They found that those mothers who later developed pre-eclampsia had babies with smaller thymus glands.
This gland usually produces a lot of immune cells.
“The baby’s thymus is affected way before we know the mother is going to develop preeclampsia,” Prof Nanan said.
But by eating a high-fibre diet filled with vegetables, beans, lentils and fruit, this encourages production of acetate. “We found that acetate is a very important factor of preeclampsia and the immune development of the baby,” Prof Nanan said.
The more fibre you eat, the more acetate you will have, which means it is more likely the thymus of the baby will be normal size. A baby with a normal-sized thymus is less likely to have allergies and the mother is less likely to develop preeclampsia.