DHA, an essential nutrient, will improve the health of your unborn baby! Fish oil and walnuts provide the essential fatty acid that can help the child’s normal brain and vision development.

What is DHA

There is nothing suspicious about DHA (or docosahexaenoic acid), the omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil is an essential nutrient for women – especially during pregnancy. DHA helps build your child’s brain, nervous system, and eyes. Omega-3 is a specific type of fat that our body needs, but it can not produce it yourself, says Melinda Johnson, RD, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

Adults supply DHA with food, and a child in the uterus needs to get these fats from the mother. Newborns receive DHA from their mother’s milk or a formula for children supplemented with DHA. It is so important that even if the mother does not consume a lot of DHA, her body will use her own DHA reservoir to deliver it to the growing baby during pregnancy and then through mother’s milk after birth.

DHA is responsible for

• Normal brain development
• The correct development of sight
• Higher birth weight

Recommended daily intake for DHA

Although there are no official recommendations on the amount of DHA needed by pregnant women, a recent review of the studies published by the Journal of Perinatal Medicine has shown that pregnant and breastfeeding women need 200 mg DHA per day; Johnson suggests the same amount.

So where can pregnant women get a daily dose of DHA?

Food is the best, says Johnson, so if a woman has the option, she should start with the diet. Salmon, light canned tuna and products with DHA, such as eggs and milk, are good options, like anchovies, herring, sardines, walnuts, and walnut oil. If you prefer to take a DHA supplement, reach for the algae instead of oil fish – it will be milder for your stomach (then you will get DHA like fish); their source is marine algae.)

Fish are a fantastic source of DHA, but pregnant and breastfeeding women must exercise some caution. You want to eat enough oily, fatty fish to benefit from DHA, but not enough to add too much dangerous mercury to your diet (and your baby). The Institute of Medicine and Food and Drug Administration present the following recommendations

• Eat a moderate amount (6 ounces or less per week) of canned (or packaged) white tuna and freshwater fish caught by family and friends.
• Eat carefully (up to 12 ounces per week) Other seafood such as crustaceans, canned (or packaged) tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.

However, these recommended restrictions on seafood intake during pregnancy have been questioned by the study of more than 8,000 pregnant women (and their children) in the UK. The study found that children of women who consumed more than the recommended amount of seafood during pregnancy had higher scores in terms of verbal intelligence, motor skills, communication, and social development. This led researchers to the conclusion that in early child development, the benefits of consuming seafood during pregnancy may outweigh the risks associated with mercury. It is not yet known whether the official recommendations on the consumption of fish during pregnancy will be modified.