My wife is expecting, and started taking a prenatal vitamin. Pretty sure it’s just whichever one looked the most legit at Target. Around the same time, I was looking through old T-Nation articles, and came across several about the questionable effectiveness of multivitamins. This led to me looking at what was offered at the store, which made me then look at prenatal vitamins. I didn’t know for sure what the difference was, and it looks like prenatal vitamins mostly contain larger doses of things more specific to women, like folic acid and iron.
Anyway, all the articles I’ve ever seen on here talked about how the mishmash of vitamins and minerals don’t work well together. Here’s the dosages from the #1 prenatal vitamin (according to some doctors):
It’s got iron and zinc, and A, E and K, but here, it says
It’s also got magnesium and calcium, but here, it says
I was surprised to see that this prenatal had more DHA than EPA. The same company’s standalone fish oil has about 3x more EPA than DHA. I know Biotest’s fish oil has more DPA and they talk about how good it is for men, but is there some reason why another company would use that ratio specifically for pregnant women but not the general population?
Anyway, so as is expected, it seems like even the “best” prenatals probably aren’t that effective. Or at least not as much as one would hope. Is it just easier/cheaper to sell something as all-in-1 than listing 10 different products?
I’m generally a believer that you should get as much of your nutrients from food as possible, but obviously in this day and age that’s not always easy, when you look at the quality of our food and how it’s raised (both plants and animals). And pregnant/nursing women in particular would probably benefit from the added boost as much as anyone else. So, in T-Nation’s opinion, what’s a better combination/timing of supplementation for pregnant/nursing women?
TL;DR Prenatal vitamins, like multivitamins, contain lots of vitamins and minerals that may counteract with each other. What are good alternatives to the all-in-1 supplementation plan for pregnant/nursing women?
@Chris_Shugart - here’s that new question I mentioned last time. As usual, any thoughts are appreciated. @QuadQueen - as a woman and nutrition-whiz, do you have any thoughts? When looking at old posts on here, I saw @Bronwen_Blunt had posted some interesting things about nutrition and pregnancy, but I don’t know if you are active on here anymore. Thanks all.