LIVER & FAVA BEANS

Doctors may differ on the best recipe for a healthy pregnancy, says Maurice Gueret, who has a pint of plain advice

Dublin women were once encouraged by doctors to drink a glass of Guinness every day of their pregnancy. A special relationship between the brewer and local maternity services can be traced all the way back to the mid 19th Century when a member of the Guinness family donated money to rebuild the Coombe Hospital. The clinical rationale for much of this stout nutritional advice was that porter provided a good source of iron, an essential mineral when you are eating and drinking for two. But the truth of the matter is rather different. There is hardly any iron in a pint of Guinness, and even less in a glass. Any metal tends to reside more on the keg than in the creamy head. Need some extra iron? Well I always say you can’t beat fresh liver with some fava beans and a nice eggnog. Today’s brewers try to distance themselves from medicinal claims, but the magic and lore attached to Ireland’s favourite tipple lives long in the memory. Guinness was once given to infants by their mothers to ‘cleanse their insides’ and rid them of worms. Henry Grattan called the brewery “the actual nurse of the people” and said the company was entitled to “every encouragement, favour and exemption” from his parliament. Nursing mothers in many of our maternity hospitals were provided with a daily snipe of stout after their delivery. As a child, I owned complete collections of Guinness is Good for You and Guinness for Strength postcards. Up to recent times, the dry stout was promoted as a pick-me-up for fatigue and a tonic for extra strength. There was even a ‘familysize’ bottle that poured up to five glasses. Guinness was also promoted as a good ‘non-fattening’ remedy if you were underweight — I still can’t work that one out. In 2010, the final medical link with iron replenishment was severed when the Irish Blood Transfusion Service ceased providing a complimentary pint of plain for its donors. Now foetal alcohol syndrome is the modern dread, and paparazzi stalk celebrity night haunts looking for pregnant stars with more than water in their glasses. There was some interesting science news on the pregnancy front this summer. The well-respected Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin declared that multi-vitamin and mineral preparations promoted for daily use in pregnancy are a completely unnecessary expense. They say that folic acid and vitamin D are certainly to be encouraged, as per national guidelines. But it would appear now that there is no need to purchase more expensive formulations that bundle extra vitamins from the B, C and E families with zinc, magnesium, iodine, selenium and other long-winded chemicals from the bamboozle division. The researchers say that much of the evidence in favour of vitamin supplementation comes from studies conducted in poor countries, where women are undernourished. There is little evidence of either starvation, scurvy or beri beri in the Irish maternal population. It might be interesting to see how many Irish pharmacies promote this new advice, and advise the less expensive therapeutic option of folic acid and vitamin D only. More interesting research has emerged from New Zealand, where it has been found that children who defy parental advice by biting their nails and sucking their thumbs are less likely to develop allergies. This may add some weight to the so-called ‘hygiene hypothesis’, which suggests that more exposure to germs in early life can be protective. It’s fun telling Mum that dirty children get sick less often than clean ones. I have been watching the post-Brexit fallout with great interest. It has to be said, the UK does resignation far better and in a timelier fashion than we do. It may have something to do with the scale of future prospects. A former PM of Britain can earn a hell of a lot more money after a term in office than during it. The reverse applies here, which is why our lot hang on long past the sell-by date. I have a soft spot for David Cameron. Though a sleek publicrelations professional to his fingertips, my first and abiding memory of him will be that of a father with a profoundly disabled first son. The Camerons’ late son, Ivan, was born with Ohtahara syndrome, a brain condition that causes severe intellectual disability and intractable seizures. David and Samantha Cameron always had high praise for their National Health Service. There were many emergencies during their son’s short life, and Cameron knew, uniquely among Tories, that cherrypicking private medicine doesn’t really do disability. The NHS would often shiver whenever Tories took lodgings on Downing Street. But I think David Cameron may have had the cure. He supported it. The newest resident at Number 10 has her own medical history. Theresa May has Type 1 diabetes and she needs four insulin jabs a day to keep her blood sugar regulated and her knee-high boots up. Her late mother had multiple sclerosis and her father, a vicar, died in a car crash. I first heard of Mrs May on Desert Island Discs a few years ago, when the first record she chose was Walk like a Man. She also chose a piece by Elgar and said that her family doctor had given her a present of the record for her A-level results. GPs are more in the habit of receiving gifts than giving, but perhaps her doctor spotted that his favourite young patient would go on to even greater things than her honours geography degree at Oxford.