This afternoon I was reviewing some guidelines and standards for my Family Med shelf tomorrow. One of them is to counsel any woman of childbearing age to take 0.4 milligrams of folic acid daily to decrease the incidence of neural tube defects should they become pregnant. (By the time a woman realizes she's missed a period or suspects she is pregnant, it is too late for additional dietary folic acid to play a part in reducing NTDs.)
Why not put that 0.4 milligrams into the birth control pills that most of the young women I know are taking? Not everyone who gets pregnant on the pill wants an abortion. Half of pregnancies carried to term are unplanned. That would be such a great idea...
Since cereal started getting fortified with folic acid the incidence of NTDs has decreased by 50% in Canada (probably similar rates in the US, but I'm too lazy to find the studies). There's some controversy about the fortification; some studies suggest a link between folic acid consumption and increased incidence of colon cancer. Others complain that fortifying with folic acid masks B-12 deficiency in the elderly. Why not throw a little B-12 in the cereal too?
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sorry, liz, totally off topic: but i just read your comments [re: giving money to the homeless] on docce's blog. i wrote #442. since there are over 700 comments up now, there is no way to dialogue with anyone. so i wanted to say how right on i thought your words were. i want to be positive and caring too, but i scratch my head at all the naive people responding who have no clue that they are part of the problem - if someone can maintain their $1000/week meth habit with handouts, he's gonna. urgh. just had to get that out to someone! thanks.
Why not take the folic acid out of the cereal so the old folks can have their fiber without the masking, and put it in the BC pills and every mocha-chino at Starbucks. That should keep those over-caffeinated little zygotes nice and healthy!
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