It’s no secret that pregnant women need folate/folic acid in order to deliver healthy babies. The women who do not take folate during pregnancy have a higher risk of delivering a baby with a neural tube defect (NTD). It’s very early in the pregnancy when the neural tube closes, which is why women should consider consuming folate as early as possible.
The reasons why women often don’t get enough folate are multi-faceted, but not eating enough leafy greens can be a cause (which gets complicated by the fact that our food supply can often be short on important nutrients). Getting folic acid from supplements or in fortified foods as well as genetic mutations are two other factors that complicate the body’s need for truly absorbable folate. Folate deficiency may not necessarily be the sole cause of NTD’s, as a vitamin B12 deficiency may also play a role. The recent studies are proving that most people are simply unable to process folic acid in a way that makes absorbable folate for the body to use directly.