Most parents hope and dream that their child will become the next example for immense human intelligence and strength like the great minds that existed before them, minds like those of Einstein, Ada Lovelace, or Isaac Newton. The latest research now offers such expecting parents hope for those dreams to come true. A study published in The Journal of Nutrition suggests that pregnant women who have greater levels of vitamin D in their bodies are highly likely to give birth to babies with higher IQ compared to those that don’t.
Vitamin D effects on pregnant women are no the only positive ones science has discovered. Instead, the vitamin is known to offer plenty of health benefits that can also help people develop strong enough bodies to fight the coronavirus illness. This vitamin is commonly produced when your skin is in direct exposure to sunlight but consuming some foods that are rich in vitamin D can also help increase levels of it in your system.
Foods like salmon and mushrooms are abundant in the vitamin but if incorporating such foods isn’t an option for you, taking supplements can also help you raise those levels of the vitamin. The lead researcher on the study is Melissa Melough, who says the tougher part to this simple task however is that not all women can easily maintain high levels of vitamin D and may need more effort than usual, this she says is especially true for women with darkly pigmented skin.
The team and Dr. Melough took help from data coming from a previous study in order to examine the link between the birth of babies with higher IQ and the levels of vitamin D found in the blood of 1,503 women while they were in their second trimester of pregnancy. The researchers took IQ score measurements for these children when they were four years old till the age of six using the Stanford-Binet intelligence test.
The study revealed that higher levels of vitamin D effects pregnant women positively and they subsequently give birth to intelligent children. The downside they discovered however was that the levels of vitamin D were much lower in Black women among other dark pigmented skinned women.
The researchers found this particular discovery as not very surprising because they were aware that melanin is present in abundance in darker tones of skin which in turn minimizes the production of vitamin D in their bodies. The important thing the study managed to highlight however was that prenatal vitamins may not have enough vitamin D to either fill up the gap or to help fix an already growing deficiency of this vitamin.
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While the vitamin D recommendations for daily use are more or less the same for all adults since it is important for the development of bones that support the body. Researchers however now also know that this vitamin serves many other functions as well such as help in developing the brains of babies while they are still in their mother’s womb.
Dr. Melough hopes their research will help pave way for making due changes in prenatal nutrition recommendations for not only pregnant women in general but especially for Black women among others who may be at a higher risk for vitamin D deficiency. Therefore she suggests that pregnant women or women hoping to get pregnant should always consult their providers of healthcare on whether or not they need more supplementation besides the usual prenatal vitamins.
