Watch Iron Content in your best Prenatal Vitamins
Pregnant women need more from their best prenatal vitamins, especially increased folic acid and iron. A slightly higher level of vitamin A is recommended by experts. They warn that it should be in the safer form of beta-carotene to prevent birth defects. The current medical guidelines recommend 600 mcg of folic acid per day which is up from the standard of 400 mcg for premenopausal women and 27 mg of iron increased from 18 mg. Pregnant women have an elevated need for magnesium, selenium, zinc, copper, vitamin C, riboflavin and niacin. Recent updates to the medical guidelines, suggest that calcium and vitamin D needs do not increase with pregnancy.
The big news is that the safety issues with the best prenatal vitamins is more critical that it is in regular multivitamins when it comes to lead content. When the FDA tested 324 multivitamins for lead, it found that several prenatal multivitamins contain larger amounts of lead than expected. While none of the best prenatal vitamins tested have exceeded the provisional total tolerable intake levels of lead of 25 mcg per day for pregnant or breastfeeding women, you need to take into account the numerous other places where lead is a ingredient and figure that into the allowable total. So keeping the lead content down in best prenatal vitamins is a good place to start looking and avoiding.
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