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Few women follow pre-pregnancy recommendations

By Anne Harding

Very few women of childbearing age are sticking to lifestyle and nutrition recommendations before becoming pregnant, new research from the UK shows.

Among 12,445 women 20 to 34 years old, the 238 who became pregnant within the next three months were only slightly more likely to be following guidelines on smoking, drinking and folic acid supplement use than were those who did not get pregnant, Dr. Hazel M. Inskip of the University of Southampton and her colleagues found.

In fact, just 2.9 percent of women were taking the recommended amount of folic acid and having not more than four alcoholic drinks each week three months before they conceived.

Encouraging women to take folic acid supplements (which reduce the risk of having a child with certain birth defects), get more exercise and eat better will be relatively easy, Inskip noted in an interview with Reuters Health; the real challenge is to help them avoid alcohol, given the current culture in the UK, where excessive drinking is common and widely accepted. "The social life of many young people involves getting drunk on a Friday and Saturday night," she said.

At the time the women were surveyed, UK guidelines recommended women planning a pregnancy have no more than one or two units of alcohol, once or twice a week; in 2007, UK public health authorities changed their recommendation to urge women to completely avoid alcohol, Inskip and her team write ... more

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