Women in the 5th month of
pregnancy often feel dizzy. Should they supplement iron and calcium medicine?
Necessary
minerals for pregnant women
Iron and calcium are two minerals which are
necessary for women in pregnancy. Nevertheless, do not take iron and calcium
whenever you are pregnant because calcium and iron in pregnant women’s blood
should be controlled, lack or excess of them causes many consequences.
The risk of lacking iron and calcium
In developing process, babies often uses
iron and calcium from mothers to make blood and bone for growing. Therefore,
pregnant women always lack iron and calcium. They have the needs of 1.200 mg
calcium per day, and 600 mg iron per day.
Besides diet, pregnant women usually take
medicine iron and calcium. But if complementing arbitrarily that medicine
without doctor’s instructions, you will not control if your body is in lack or
excess of minerals that leads to some confusion:
Lack
of iron
Babies have the risk of malnourished,
underweight, and pregnant women are easy to miscarriage or give a premature
birth, which affects constitution and intelligence of babies in the future. Mother
can have anemia, fatigue and increase the risk of infection.
If women lack iron in pregnancy, it will
lead to premature birth and fetal deformity. Therefore, in the first months of
pregnancy, doctors recommend that pregnant women have to take enough iron.
Lack of iron is concerned to a quarter of
death in pregnant women, raises obstetric complications, especially bleeding
after birth. Adding iron by diet will be easy to control and safer than that by
medicine.
However, pregnant women still take iron
medicine, but supplementing them arbitrarily without doctor’s assignment can
lead to excess of iron causing to damage organs such as cirrhosis, diabetes by
pancreatic and cardiovascular dysfunction.
Lack
of calcium
If supplying calcium in pregnancy is not
enough, the body will mobilize the calcium from mothers’ bones and teeth to
ensure amount of calcium for babies that, which causes many symptoms including
cramps, muscle pain, especially in the last three months, leading to
osteoporosis, tooth decay in mother after birth.
For baby, lack of calcium will affect
building bone and tooth germ from fetal stage that is the reason for defection
on bones and teeth (can last to adulthood).
Babies can be rickets, under development, have
deformation of bone structure. And mothers can have pain in joint, cramps, and
in severe situation can be convulsive by low blood calcium. Newborns have signs
of calcium deficiency such as soft skull and wide bregmatic space.
Babies cry to cyanosis by spasm. Even
convulsion causes the mother’s body to easy to fatigue, degenerate bone early,
grow bone thorns, indent born, and lose born. Mothers are also injured in
teeth, teeth break, backache, hip ache. For babies, after born, they will have rickets
and soft bone.
Pregnant
women need to supplement vitamin following doctor’s guide.
Excess of iron and calcium – more dangerous
Although not common, but the situation of
women in excess of iron and calcium still exists and causes many complications
during and after pregnancy, in detailed:
Excess
of iron (due to supplementing more than needed)
The iron surplus can increase level of free
iron in blood of fetus, raise hemoglobin concentrations in mother’s blood. This
obstructs the process of creating blood normally of fetus leading to premature,
underweight and increases the risk of death for women.
Mothers can have some symptoms such as
diarrhea, blood in the urine, nausea, stomachache, and so on. These symptoms is
usually shown about 60 minutes after taking overdose of iron, at that time
pregnant women need to visit doctor immediately, not wait for diseases to get
better.
The fetus may be increased calcium in
blood; and when born, its fontanel is closed too early; jaw bone can be
deformed, large and jutted out to the front, which are not useful for health
and affect aestheticism. If a mother takes too much iron and baby absorbs
nutrients from her, the buttocks of baby will have blue pieces when it is born.
However, this is benign symptom and will go
away when the baby grows up. But if mother’s body is in excess of iron, she
will be caught iron in some parts such as liver, which causes cirrhosis or
tanning skin.
Excess
of calcium
Although syndrome of calcium excess caused
by diet with too much calcium is rare, if pregnant women supplement too much
alkali every day (milk alkali syndrome), it may occur excess of calcium. Some
signs of this syndrome are muscle spasm, constipation, frequent urination,
nausea, memory disturbances, coma, and possible death.
When in excess of calcium, placenta is
increased level of calcification causing to reduce the metabolism between
mother and fetus, which makes the baby be under development. The mother will
have constipation, dry mouth, headache, thirsty, anorexia, and fatigue;
increase risk of stones in urinary tract, especially kidney stones.
The addition of too much calcium can also
affect absorption of other essential trace elements, especially iron. If using
milk and milk products regularly but wanting to use more calcium medicine,
pregnant women should have doctor’s assignment.
Calcium excess makes the hormone creates high
level of calcium in mother’s blood. If during pregnancy, the mother drinks less
water, calcium cannot excrete through urine, she can be suffered from kidney
stones. Furthermore, that can also damage intestinal tract affecting absorption
of other nutrients.
