Why nutrition is important

In earlier years and often to this day this disease is treated with cruel and I tell you - unhelpful and even dangerous - dietary advice: To cut out salt in the diet and to cut down on the daily fluid intake. Many women have been advised to watch their weight gain, thus leading to malnourishment if a cut down in food intake is the consequence. Many, many of us where forced to eat boiled white rice with no spices, saltless, with no other food allowed all day for several days of the week, sometimes for a longer period if we were lucky enough to stand this "treatment" without collapsing eventually.

Already in early days we have come into contact with an American obstetrician, Thomas H. Brewer MD, who calls this disease "Metabolic toxemia of late pregnancy - a disease of malnutrition". He sent out a lot of helpful information, even wrote some books on this topic. He has never ceased to point of the important role of proper nutrition on every day of pregnancy meaning:

Sufficient amount of proteins (no less than 90 grams daily, animal and vegetable proteins), coming from sources like milk, eggs, cheese, kefir, meat, poultry, fish - preferably deep sea fish containing omega-3-fatty acids, lentils, beans, peas or to a lesser degree soy products. It also depends on the food you are used to.

Vitamins all of them, but especially important is Vit. B6 as it is needed to split the food protein in the body and to enable proper metabolism into the body´s own albumin and to prevent allergies.

Salt to taste or weight as it keeps the water in the bloodstream instead of it leaking into the tissues:

The water needs to stay in the bloodstream to keep the bloodflow up and the keep the amount of blood extended. If salt (and/or albumin) is missing the water will leak into the tissues, making the blood go thick. This is the reason why the blood will no longer flow properly and the supply through the placenta to the baby is decreased. Certain hormones are released with the aim to increase the blood pressure. A higher blood pressure means better blood circulation and better supply of the nutrients through the placenta to the baby. If the blood pressure is raised for a certain time protein spills will occur in the urine as a result of "worn out and overworked" parts in the kidneys. It has long been believed that salt will increase the blood pressure. This is not true for most of the people all over the world. A couple of years ago it has been found out that only approx. 25% of those people who suffer from chronic hypertension show increase in blood pressure after consuming ordinary table salt.(This is due to a certain sensitiveness to chloride, however, the sodium does the water-keeping job.) All the other 75% of these chronically affected people should even consume a certain amount of salt - 5 to 7 grams are recommended - to prevent the same complication as it is found in pre-eclampsia - hypovolemia. This refers to chronically ill people who can be males or females that are not pregnant or not even in the "reproductive" age. It is well known that in pregnancy the amount of needed nutrients will increase and this refers to ALL nutrients and minerals etc. There are many difficult relations for which you will find the explanations in our information booklets, either in English (ISBN 3-9805324-2-9; Pre-Eclampsia from my point of view - author: Sabine Kuse) or in German (ISBN 3-9805324-0-2; EPH-Gestose aus meiner Sicht - Autorin: Sabine Kuse), all to be ordered online, under the above mentioned German address and sent out with an invoice (Europe only) or cheque or cash in advance. Also please refer to the relating pages on literature either in English or in German. At a later time we will add the English library service to this page.

Sufficient energy which is needed to enable the proper metabolism and function of all the nutrients in the body. The fluid intake should come up to approx. 2,0-2,5 litres, also considering your own climate. It might therefore be higher. Clean water is your best choice followed by milk.

You should not - under no circumstance - use diuretics, neither of chemical nor of herbal origin such as nettle tea or rice. This will lead to loss of water out of the bloodstream and only to a little - very shorttermed - diuresis out of the tissues. However, as these diuretics will also force out many minerals it will increase the original problem - the lack of nutrients. Shortly afterwards the problem will return to a much greater and more serious extend.

Of course we know that sometimes you cannot relate this complication of pregnancy to lack of nutrients but other causes, amongst them so-called immunological causes, i.e. the "Anti-Phosholipid-Syndrome". However, this is very rare but needs special treatment if present. Please contact if you suffered from early HELLP-syndrom (upto 30st week of pregnancy) and/or several miscarriages. If you want to come into contact with us either click our e-mail address or enter your comments in the guest book.

Thank you for visiting our page and reading through all this information which is certainly valuable to those who suffer from this disease and are needlessy forced to cut down on any of the nutrients. Please accept that we are not liable for any consequences that you think come from our advice to eat properly. There is nothing wrong in eating a sufficient amount of good quality food every day of your pregnancy.

Contact to Dr. Thomas Brewer

If you want to know more about nutrition you may find help here:

Dr. Thomas H. Brewer
249 Buttolph Drive
Appt. 201
Middlebury
VT 05753
USA
email: TomBrewer@mailbug.com