The Hemp Connection:
oranges

The relationship between nutrition and pre-eclampsia is getting stronger! Researchers have reported that using a multivitamin supplement containing folic acid in the second trimester of pregnancy helped to reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia. Personally, since folic acid is also recommended to any woman who is trying to conceive, I'd recommend taking it all the time instead of trying to guess when is the right time.

I've worked with many women trying to conceive, who have trouble changing their food habits. Some, out of fear of those changes or frustration at the challenge, give up, let the reproductive endocrinologist be the primary person fixing the problem, and figure they'll worry about their diet later.

Bad idea.

What you eat when you're preparing to become pregnant, while you're pregnant, while you're nursing, and while you're getting back into shape after all of that, are all vitally important. There's no such logical strategy as putting nutrition on the back burner, letting the doctor fix the problem, and worrying about the food later. It all fits together…and it affects more than just you!

By the way, good sources of folic acid include: lentils (right now is great weather for soup!),boiled collard greens (great if you're a Southern belle), chickpeas (whoo hoo for hummous!), papaya (always great in a fruit salad), frozen peas (easy to keep in the freezer), asparagus (this is the season when it starts getting cheap), broccoli (easy to keep around), strawberries (not a hard thing to have to eat), oranges (a winter favorite).

Wen SW, Chen XK, Rodger M, White RR, Yang Q, Smith GN, Sigal RJ, Perkins SL, Walker MC. Folic Acid in Early Second Trimester May Reduce Risk of Preeclampsia Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2008;198:45.e1-45.e7.

Not long ago a woman with PCOS handed me a diet diary for analysis. She had eaten a burger without the bun and a sweetened ice tea for breakfast. Lunch didn't happen until 2 pm, and it was a brownie with ice cream. And finally, she recorded a bowl of cereal for dinner.

One of the things that jumped out at me was that there were no fruits or vegetables in her meal plan. When I asked her about it…she told me she was avoiding carbs!

Fruits have somehow gotten a bad rap because of their carbohydrate content. But they're not the culprit in an unhealthy diet. In fact, fruits are very high in antioxidants, which can help to repair the damage that life stress and the stress of having a chronic disease can create. In my opinion, you can't afford NOT to have fruit.

I chose oranges this week, because I live in Arizona and I have an orange tree off of my patio. It is the most wonderful treat to wake up, pick a few oranges, and have a glass of fresh squeezed juice. Or, when I need a break in the afternoon, to pick a fresh snack for myself. Nothing tastes better than fruit right from the source. I recently made a great salad vinaigrette using orange juice and olive oil as the base. Even with all these oranges, I'm not making a dent in my supply!

If your diet diary mimicks the one I described above, challenge yourself to try the following. Be sure to have a serving of fruit the size of a tennis ball at each meal, or the total equivalent of 3 servings that size of fruit in the course of a day. Challenge yourself to not eat any sources of refined sugar until you've met your daily quota of fruit. See if, when you focus on fruit, your appetite for other sugars diminishes. And in the process, if changing the kind of sugar you eat doesn't help stabilize your energy levels and help you to feel better.