Feed Your Folate Status.

If you’re on a fertility journey then it’s pretty much a given that you’ve heard of folic acid and know that it’s super important when it comes to pregnancy. Folate or folic acid is in every good pre-natal after all. But did you know it’s also really important to have good stores of it before you get pregnant? Did you also know that there are different types?

Vitamin B9 is also called folic acid (synthetic version found in fortified foods and some multivitamins/pre-natals) and folate (natural form found in foods, more of this below) and is part of the B vitamins that help with cell division but crucially it helps protect against neural tube defects (brain and spine) in a growing baby.

Evidence suggests that the neural tube develops into the brain in the three to four weeks after conception - that’s pretty early on right? So before you may even know that you’re pregnant. Which is why it’s beneficial to have a good folate status prior to conception.

So, where can we get some folate rich foods into our daily diet? Well, the clue us in the name, derived from the latin word “folium” which means foliage. Think leafy greens like curly kale, spinach, Swiss chard along with broccoli, legumes, lentils, avocado, black-eyed peas, liver, beans, oranges, asparagus.

Check out my delicious lentil recipe featuring spinach here.

Alcohol is an antagonist for B9, which means it might impair the body’s absorption of it. Another good reason to go easy on the alcohol when trying to conceive.