During pregnancy, your obstetrician will likely prescribe or recommend that you purchase prenatal vitamins. These vitamins help ensure you're getting the nutrients you need to support your pregnancy. While you might have heard that they can benefit your skin if you're not pregnant, there's actually no truth to this claim.
Prenatal Vitamins
Prenatal vitamins are very similar to regular women's multivitamin supplements; they contain the vitamins and minerals that you need to maintain cellular health and wellness. The difference between prenatals and regular multivitamins is that prenatals have larger quantities of certain key nutrients, particularly iron and folic acid. During pregnancy, iron helps increase your blood volume, while folic acid is crucial to your embryo's formation of the neural tube, which becomes the brain and spinal cord.
Your Skin
Your skin is part of your integumentary system, which also includes your hair and nails. While it's true that your skin cells, like all metabolically active cells, need vitamins, you probably can't benefit your skin by taking supplements unless you're truly vitamin deficient. This is because while vitamins maintain normal function, extra vitamins can't help "supercharge" cellular function, nor can extra vitamins undo damage caused by environmental factors, aging and injury.
Misconceptions
The reason you may have heard that prenatal vitamins are good for your skin is that many of the women taking prenatals have glowing, clear complexions. This is not an effect of the vitamins, however; it's actually due to hormones, and is a result of the fact that most of the women taking prenatals are pregnant. Pregnancy hormones increase blood flow to the skin, resulting in fewer breakouts and a healthier-looking glow.
Your Safety
While prenatal vitamins won't benefit your skin, they won't actually hurt you if you're not pregnant, explains Katherine Zeratsky, a dietitian, for MayoClinic.com. As long as you're otherwise healthy, you can try prenatal vitamins if you're curious about them. However, be warned that they can cause constipation as a result of the high levels of iron. Many women also experience nausea and other symptoms of gastric upset on prenatal vitamins.
References
- "Human Physiology"; Lauralee Sherwood, Ph.D.; 2004
- "What to Expect When You're Expecting"; Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel; 2008
- MayoClinic.com: Prenatal vitamins: OK for women who aren't pregnant?
Member Comments