Vitamin E rich food for a healthy baby

Findings suggest expecting mothers should increase the intake of foods rich in Vitamin E to deliver a healthy baby.

According to the results of the latest study, if a mother’s diet is deficient in Vitamin E or Tocopherol than it may cause her child to suffer from asthma once he starts growing up. This is likely to happen five times more than the children whose mother’s consumed rich sources of Vitamin E during her pregnancy.

Asthma, a disease of the respiratory system in which the airways constrict, become inflamed, and are lined with excessive amounts of mucus, is on an increase in the UK from the last 50 years.

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen studied 1,253 mothers and their children for more than five years and showed that insufficiency of Vitamin E has an adverse affect on the lungs of the foetus.

The first 16 weeks of pregnancy is most critical and proper intake of the Vitamin is recommended by the doctors. According to Dr Graham Devereux, the lead researcher, lungs and airways are most affected when the foetus is 16 weeks old. The study elucidates the fact that Vitamin E deficiency in early pregnancy may be more likely to influence airway function.

Vitamin E, a fat soluble vitamin, is most abundantly found in vegetable oils such as palm oil, sunflower, canola, corn, soybean and olive oil. Other sources of vitamin E are whole grains, fish, peanut butter, and green leafy vegetables, fortified breakfast cereals, nuts and wheat germ.

The research also showed that the child’s intake of foods rich in Vitamin E did not make much difference, if as a foetus, he had got lower levels of the vitamin from the mother. Such children are more likely to wheeze and have eczema than their peers.

Eating healthy and balanced diet is recommended for the expected mothers. Modifying the diet to include Vitamin E may help protect her child from developing asthma by the age of five.