How to Stop Smoking During Pregnancy

Video Transcript

DR. CHARLES BENS: Hi, I'm Dr. Charles Bens, president of Healthy @ Work Inc. I'm here today to talk to you for a few minutes about how to stop smoking during pregnancy. One of the most important things I can give advice to teenagers and young 20-year-olds on pregnancy is to make that you plan your pregnancy if you possibly can. In planning, you want to actually quit a year or two before. I know that's very difficult but six months to a year is essential. One of the reasons that this is important is that if you are still smoking within six to nine months before you become pregnant, there's been DNA damage to both the male sperm and to the egg of the female, and this can be passed on to the children and you want to avoid that at all cost. In addition to the stopping, you want to make sure you change the diet. Get into a healthy diet with whole grains and vegetables and fruits, and a lot of things that are really going to help those cells to become healthier as you're producing this new baby. You want to do some exercise, and you want to make sure that your stress levels are down. You want to make sure that you're taking some extra vitamins and minerals. You want to reverse some of the damage that may have been done when you were smoking. Some of the key nutrients in that regard are vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin E, vitamin D, beta-carotene, CoQ10 and omega-3 oils. You want to make sure you get as many of those into your diet as possible. The other thing you want to do is to avoid those cravings. I mean it's really hard to quit smoking. Sometimes, it's considered to be more hard than quitting heroine. So to do that, you want to eat more tryptophan-rich foods. That's turkey and cottage cheese and almonds and scrambled eggs. These foods that have tryptophan in them actually convert the serotonin in the body, and they give your brain the things that it needs. The neurotransmitters, they're going to make the brain think that it's getting enough things that need that serotonin and not from the nicotine that it was dependent on before. If you're really, really desperate, you might want to try some 5HTP. This is a supplemental form of tryptophan, and this can help with those cravings as well. I think the main thing, to summarize, is to make sure that you've stopped smoking as much in advance to the pregnancy as possible. You get a good diet going, some good exercise and some good vitamins and minerals to make sure your body is strong for that pregnancy. Thank you very much.