Pregnancy

Conventional wisdom says: When it comes to minerals, all an expectant mother needs to be concerned about during pregnancy is to take plenty of calcium (through calcium supplements and foods to which calcium has been added) and iron. Then both she and her baby will have all the important minerals they need for a healthy delivery.

Now The Calcium Lie reveals:
An expectant mother needs to be certain to get an adequate supply of all essential minerals, not just calcium and iron, and in the proper balance, because her baby naturally takes 10% of her body's mineral supply. An oversupply of calcium, however, can have dangerous consequences.

Here's some additional information you'll learn about pregnancy by reading The Calcium Lie by Dr. Robert Thompson and Kathleen Barnes.

- The human body is approximately 72% water and 28% minerals. As a mother's baby grows, he or she draws minerals from the mother's body. Over the course of a 265-day pregnancy, the baby takes about four pounds of minerals from the mother or about 10% of her total mineral supply. It doesn't matter if the baby needs a mineral that is in short supply in the mother's body, the baby will take it anyway, leaving the mother even shorter on some essential mineral than before. On the other hand, if the baby's mother has an excess of a mineral (like calcium) that excess will be passed on to the baby as an exact mineral fingerprint of the mother.

- Mothers who have given birth to several children have an even greater need for adequate minerals. A mother of five children would potentially have had her mineral storehouse depleted by 50 percent. Handling the demands of motherhood would be extremely challenging at that level of mineral depletion.

- Conventional medicine seems to agree that pregnant women need supplements, so a prescription "vitamin" supplement is provided that is little more than calcium, iron and folic acid, a B vitamin (folate) known to help prevent one type of birth defects. Pregnant women are also told that they need calcium to keep their bone density during pregnancy when the baby is drawing on the mother's mineral supply. In fact, it's the mineral supply, not the calcium supply that moms need.

- An expectant mother needs a complete mineral supplement that they can absorb and use, not just calcium. The best way to determine exactly which minerals are needed, in what amounts, is through a reliable hair tissue mineral analysis. The minerals in her commercially sold (synthetically produced) "vitamin" may be the wrong ones for her and her baby and they could actually even increase the mineral imbalances and deficiencies.

- Mineral supplementation with ionic sea-salt-derived minerals may, in fact, be the most important nutritional choice we can make during pregnancy.

- One indication of just how essential a proper and balanced supply is to women during pregnancy is the prevalence of an eating disorder known as "pica." As many as 68% of all pregnant women develop this eating disorder, in which they develop non-food items, most commonly dirt, clay, cornstarch, laundry starch, and baking soda. Pica is the body's desperate attempt to replace essential and missing minerals. Many doctors diagnose this eating disorder as a need for iron, but iron is just one of many essential minerals the body needs, and all of these minerals must be in proper balance. Even further mineral imbalance results when pregnant women listen to conventional wisdom urging them to take more calcium.

To learn more about Pregnancy, read The Calcium Lie.