Medications During Pregnancy
What happened to the day of staying clear of any drug, stimulant, or medication while pregnant?
For many, when they find out they are expecting a baby, a whole new view on personal health decisions is born well before the baby.
Women would stop smoking, ditch the coffee, cut sugar, avoid chemicals in the house, refuse x-ray tests, stay out of smoggy areas and go to even more lengths to avoid anything that would potentially harm their developing baby.
Apparently, those days are over.
Today, one in two women will take some sort of prescription medications during pregnancy .
Over 70% of women take at least 1 over-the-counter or prescription medication during the most crucial developmental stage for the baby, the first trimester.
In the last 30 years, we have seen the prescription rate soar upward, with the increase of prescription medications during pregnancy rising over 60% and the use of 4 or more medications while pregnant tripled.
95% of the drugs tested concluded the safety of taking them was “undetermined.”
The truth is we have no idea, or very little at best, as to what effects any form of medication does on a developing baby.
Many people mistakenly believe the baby is completely protected by the placenta barrier, much like they feel our brain is protected by the blood-brain barrier from chemicals, toxins, and medications.
The placenta, much like the blood-brain barrier, is living tissue and has multiple variables, many of which we have yet to discover.
These known and unknown variables can change the placenta’s protective nature and allow substances that normally would not pass through, to pass right on in.
It is not a concrete solid defense wall at all whatsoever.
For the brain, fever, trauma, increased blood sugar, and processed food chemicals can change the permeability of the blood-brain barrier.
Stress, medications, and lack of sleep have also been shown to allow the brain’s defense barrier to weaken.
Similar circumstances and events can do the same for the placental defense barrier as well.
A large part of my wife’s practice is dedicated to seeing pregnant women, newborn babies, and children. My wife has focused on these populations for years serving over 50,000 office visits with these beautiful patients to date.
We have designed in-office and distance health programs that target creating the ideal parental physical environments and health status for conception, pregnancy, the birth process, and those early years for mom, dad, baby, and the whole family.
Taking toxic prenatal vitamins, staying off your feet, eating what you like, and apparently taking doctor-prescribed medications can be some of the worst decisions women make in the life and health of their baby.
Great decisions and outcomes come from great information and guidance. Take the time to learn all you can, seek help where offered, get a coach, team and plan together and make the best decisions possible.
We are here to help you with any step of the process.
You and your baby deserve it!
Dr. Don
