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What Nutritional Problem Is Common

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What nutritional problem is common in children in India? Neural tube defects are defects found in the brain and spine that are present at birth. They usually appear during a woman’s first month of pregnancy. Neural tube defects are preventable with the use of a folic acid supplement before and during pregnancy. Folic acid is a B vitamin that can prevent an infant from developing a neural tube defect (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). All of the vitamins in the vitamin B classification have been of specific concentration lately. The vitamins in the vitamin B classification are the following: vitamin B12, vitamin B6, zinc and folate. Deficiencies in vitamin B12 and folate are thought to contribute to neural tube defects …show more content…

Many times a woman does not know she is pregnant so she does not take a folic acid supplementation. Women should be consuming .4mg of folic acid before and during pregnancy. Women that have had a neural tube defect pregnancy should take 4.0 mg of folic acid a day to prevent another neural tube defect pregnancy. Women should continue taking folic acid supplements through the first trimester (Kumar, 2009).
A deficiency in folate can play a role in the development of neural tube defects in infants. The authors found that low zinc levels and high copper levels may also play a role in neural tube defects (Kumar, 2009). Folic acid has been fortified in enriched grains, such as, rice, cereal, bread and pasta. Rice is one of India’s staple foods. Rice fortification may help reduce the risk of neural tube defects. Older children have been studied and fortified rice eliminated the micronutrient deficiency in folate. (Thankachan, et al., 2012) The hope is that women will eat enough of these foods to prevent a folate deficiency (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). An earlier report found that 4.1 infants with neural tube defects out of 1,000 total births reported having neural tube defects in India. The authors found that different states of India report different numbers of neural tube defects. This is due to availability for food, poverty in certain areas and availability of folic acid supplements. Each state had a different

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