Word: folic
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Consuming products with folic acid helps prevent certain serious birth defects of the brain and spine known as neural-tube defects. The U.S. Public Health Service has recommended that all women of childbearing age consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily beginning before pregnancy. Despite the encouraging findings in the Journal report, there is no direct evidence that blood-folate levels in women ages 15 to 40 have reached protective levels. DR. JENNIFER L. HOWSE, PRESIDENT March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation White Plains...
...latest discovery, which he will present at the National Institutes of Health this week but which he first revealed at congregation headquarters in Rome last fall, shows a strong relationship between the severe brain atrophy of Alzheimer's disease and low levels of the common B vitamin known as folic acid, or folate. Furthermore, nuns with the highest levels of folate suffered the lowest levels of cognitive decline. Says Charles Halsted, professor of internal medicine at the University of California at Davis: "It's pretty exciting stuff...
Indisputable confirmation will require large-scale clinical trials. Luckily, these may not be long in coming. The National Institute on Aging has already modified a trial currently under way that looks at the influence of supplemental B vitamins, including folic acid, on heart disease in 3,000 older women. To make the Alzheimer's connection, the NIA simply added an annual test of cognitive function to the heart study to see whether the vitamins lower the rate of expected dementia in the group. Results from that study should be available within three years...
...what the nuns asked too. Unfortunately, there is very little information about how such nutrients are metabolized in the elderly. Snowdon suggests that taking double the current recommended daily allowance is probably a safe precaution. But it is possible to take too much of a good thing. Excessive folic acid can be dangerous if it masks symptoms of other diseases...
...behind the tax credit for stay-at-home moms (per-person average: $178), the $50 million in grants to help children on Medicaid treat their asthma, and more money to train pediatricians in children's hospitals. She recently attended an event designed to inform women about the benefits of folic acid. While she no longer sits in on West Wing meetings, she makes sure that top members of her staff do. Says one: "She has two or three people who are kind of constantly with us." And they rarely lose an argument...