Stay Secure For Pregnancy About Green Tea And Caffeine Drinks

Published: 24th March 2011
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Pregnant women might be wise to limit the quantity of green tea they drink in the midst of pregnancy, and must be careful about taking any green tea supplements. Green tea is rich in antioxidants, and has a host of health advantages with reference to dental health, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and weight reduction. But researchers have discovered, whilst looking at the active constituent of green tea, the epigallocatechins, or EGCG for short, that it could impact the direction the body uses folate. Folate is crucial for pregnant ladies as it prevents neural tube congenital anomalies in babies.

The dilemma of green tea in the course of pregnancy is that the EGCG molecules are structurally comparable to a compound noted as methotrexate. Methotrexate can kill cancer cells by chemically bonding with an enzyme within the body called enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). Healthy men and women have this enzyme also - it's part of what is called the folate pathway, that is the pathway, or actions, the body takes to transform nutrients like folate into some thing that will be used to support its regular functions.


But this chemical similarity implies that the EGCG in green tea also binds with the enzyme DHFR, and when it does this, it inactivates this enzyme. When this enzyme is inactivated, the capability of the body to use folate is likely to be affected. How much green tea can be eaten up, or precisely what amount of folate assimilation is affected, is unclear. Though the research write-up did say that drinking 2 cups of green tea a day can stop cancer cells ( that is what methotrexate is targeting) from growing.

The excellent news on caffeine drank amid pregnancy, from coffee and tea, is that a moderate amount is fine. Two studies, one by Danish scientists who interviewed much more than 88,000 pregnant women, and the other by the Yale University School of Medicine, had similar determinations on caffeine in the course of pregnancy.

The concerns over caffeine were that it would lead to low birth weight or miscarriage. And this is still accurate of a really high daily intake of coffee. The Yale team found that drinking about 600mg of caffeine a day, that is about 6 cups of coffee, would decrease birth weight to levels that were clinically considerable. The rate at which birth weight was reduced was established at being 28 grams per 100 mg, or 1 cup, of coffee daily. But they emphasized that this would not be significant for moderate caffeine consumption.


The Danish study found that drinking 8 cups or a lot more of coffee daily (this would be about 16 cups or a great deal more of tea), would boost the prospects of miscarriage, or stillbirth, by 60% when equated with ladies who didn't drink caffeine. They also found that moderate coffee or tea drinking did not pose significant risks. For those drinking half a cup to 3 cups of coffee a day, the risk of fetal death was 3% higher in comparison to non-caffeine drinkers. And for those drinking 4 to 7 cups of coffee a day, the risk increases to 33%. 1 cup of coffee equals about 2 cups of tea when comparing caffeine levels. The suggested amount of coffee drunk is up to 3 cups every day, or 6 cups of tea, by the UK food agency.

Did you enjoy reading this? If yes, you may also visit pregnancy101.org to read more about some of the best pregnancy tips and guides and have a look at pregnancy information.

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