Now let's rewind further still. I see a lot of pregnant women and their babies (After all i did write the book "Natural Childcare"). Because of this absurd fear of vitamin A poisoning in the past 10 years or so, pregnant women have absolutely stayed away from cod liver oil.
Mind you i have to put an interjection here, and you wouldn't love me so much if it wasn't for my interjections, BUT i am always amazed to see that many women are prepared to give away things like vitamins because it may be bad for the baby but somehow they are not so keen to give up alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, cannabis or pain killers. Funny about that. Glad i got that out!
Back to cod liver oil, which, remember, contains both A and D in the correct proportion. Why am i vindicated? Because recent research has shown that vitamin D deficiency in pregnancy may be one of the causes of problems such as allergies, asthma and possibly autism and ADHD in the resulting child. Ha! Told you so told you so told you so!
So, what does Grannie suggest? Simple: you can be neurotic about not taking cod liver oil in the first half of the pregnancy (after all, i keep supplements for pregnant women to a minimum myself in the first 20 weeks), that will make you feel safer, always a good thing. But after week 20 it is a good idea to get back to taking cod liver oil. And make sure it's a good clean brand, not one that contains synthetic A to boost the count. One capsule or one teaspoon a day will do. This way you will be having about 4,500 iu of A and 450 iu of D every day. Because if you are not spending enough time exposed to the sun you will be D deficient.
But vitamin D deficiency is definitely another blog.
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