Preventing Complications with Nutrition

Even the March of Dimes web site says that "the causes of preeclampsia are not completely understood" and "currently, there is no way to prevent preeclampsia or gestational hypertension." Nutrition is not mentioned as a treatment. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it does seem like Dr. Brewer's findings haven't gained a foothold with the mainstream medical community because simple good nutrition doesn't make the drug companies money.


Preventing Complications with Nutrition
from Midwifery Today E-News 11:16

Nutrition in pregnancy—a no-brainer, right? Who would think it was so controversial? Disagreement over a healthy diet during pregnancy continues to rage, with one side saying that what a woman eats will have no effect on her pregnancy and the other saying it has an enormous impact. So what's a woman to eat?

The fact is that research has been done on this subject, but with the exception of folic acid, it stopped somewhere around the 1980s when the focus shifted to drugs as the answer to curing all ills. The research that was done was not widely accepted due to the fact that it could not include clinically controlled studies. It would not show common sense or ethics to starve a group of pregnant women in order to supply a control group. The researchers did the logical thing and used the women's previous diet and circumstances as the control. The results were amazing. Dr. Tom Brewer totally eradicated preeclampsia in specific populations where the former rates were upwards of 40 percent. He had the women eat a healthy, varied, well-balanced diet that included high quality foods, adequate protein and complex carbohydrates. He also had them drink water to thirst, salt to taste and avoid drugs. Unfortunately, the National Institute of Health refused to publish the results because he couldn't do a clinically controlled study.

So what's the problem with pregnancy nutrition? The standard medical community does not believe that women need to eat this way. Doctors keep saying that they don't know the cause of preeclampsia, but they are madly searching for a "magic pill" or single cause to shed some light on the mystery.

"Since such a common and lethal disease must have rational, scientific etiology or cause, theories other than maternal malnutrition in late pregnancy have proliferated, as private drug firms have stampeded in a frenzy to find the 'magic bullet" to cure or treat blindly the signs and symptoms of this still 'mysterious,' enigmatic, cryptic 'disease of antiquity.' So far all of these non-nutritional, drug-focused efforts have failed."
—Dr. Tom Brewer, The New Genetics in Global Maternal-Fetal Medicine/Perinatology, 2003

This attitude means that the majority of women receive no education on nutrition in pregnancy. Desperate treatments of preeclampsia, such as diuretics, elimination of salt intake and calorie and weight gain restriction, only exacerbate the problem by further reducing and restricting much-needed blood volume (called hypovolemia) and reducing the blood supply to the placenta and fetus. Women call Dr. Brewer daily with horror stories of eclampsia, premature babies, placental abruption and fetal growth restriction.

He has spent a lifetime doing research and education on preeclampsia prevention, the cause of which is widely thought to be unknown. But not to Dr. Brewer. He found in his obstetrical practice over the years that asking women what they ate and having them eat a well-balanced, adequate protein and salt, high complex carbohydrate (whole grains, beans, vegetables, etc.) varied diet all but eliminated the incidence of preeclampsia in the populations with which he was working. Another plus was the lower incidence or elimination of premature labor and births, placental abruption, fetal growth restriction and hypovolemia.

Preeclampsia, toxemia and eclampsia are all symptomatic degrees of the same disease that Dr. Brewer calls "metabolic toxemia of late pregnancy." They are evidenced by symptoms of high blood pressure, edema (swelling), sudden weight gain, proteinuria (protein in the urine), spots before the eyes, headaches, elevated liver enzymes and, in the most severe cases, eclamptic seizures. It is a dangerous disease of pregnancy that can kill both mother and baby. Any one of the symptoms alone is not necessarily an indication of preeclampsia. For instance, some swelling is normal during pregnancy; and it is not uncommon for a healthy, well-nourished woman to have a month where she gains 5–10 pounds due to a normal, healthy, expanding blood volume (usually in the seventh to eighth month).

The anatomy of eclampsia is complicated, but the basis of Dr. Brewer's research is simple: Eat good food and avoid drugs. Working with a poor, malnourished population, he looked at what the women were eating and the high rate of eclampsia and other serious maternal/fetal health problems. Rather than throwing complicated, expensive technology and drugs at the problem, he did something logical—he fed them. He asked what they were eating and recommended they eat whatever health[ful], whole foods were available to them. Apparently their diets were especially deficient in protein, so he recommended they eat eggs and drink milk because these were not only nourishing, but also inexpensive and easy to come by. Meat was expensive and scarce, but if the women could afford to obtain some, he recommended they add it to their diets, too. Contrary to the popular beliefs at the time, he told women to salt their food to taste. This supports an expanding blood volume necessary to support pregnancy and grow a baby. He reduced the rates of eclampsia from 40 percent to almost nothing.

— Amy V. Haas
Excerpted from "Preventing Complications with Nutrition," Midwifery Today, Issue 67