Folic acid has always shown its benefits for the baby when taken during pregnancy, and even with older people this synthetic compound of vitamin B group has many virtues, to which scientists have added more, Folic acid supplements during the first months of pregnancy reduce the risk of the baby developing cleft lip.
We remind you that the cleft lip or cleft palate develops when the tissues that form the upper lip or palate are not closed properly, and although it is corrected with surgery, it takes a few months before it can be carried out, with which the feeding of the Baby is more complicated.
The study to reach this conclusion was carried out in Norway, a country that has the highest rate of this deformation in the entire European continent. The team of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of Dirham, North Carolina (USA), consulted the mothers of the 573 children born with cleft lip or palate between 1996 and 2000, in addition to 763 Mothers of children who were born without this problem, on the consumption of folic acid supplements during their pregnancy. The results obtained were studied controlling other risk factors such as the mother smoking during pregnancy, and the result obtained was that the consumption of folic acid can reduce the risk of cleft lip by up to 40%. The intake of folic acid through a diet rich in fruits and vegetables also reduces this risk, but to a lesser extent, 25%.
Scientists agree that if folic acid, in addition to being necessary to prevent problems with the neural tube, prevents birth defects, these benefits should be exploited by fortifying food, as in the United States, which began to fortify several years ago. flour, a performance that has also been applied by other countries such as Canada, Australia, Mexico and Chile. The study has been published in the British Medical Journal, you can access it in pdf format through this link.
