Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Pregnacy Related Nausea

Below are some technical highlights Dr. Michel Brown summarized from the New England Journal of Medicine:

Ginger and Vitamin B6 are the most effective, first line remedy for pregnancy related nausea.Randomized, placebo controlled trials have shown effectiveness of vitamin B6 (10–25 mg every 8 hours) in the treatment of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy.

Oral Vitamin B6 has been studied in more than 6,000 patients and controls with no evidence of teratogenicity. In these randomized trials, Vitamin B6 has been associated with 70% reduction in nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.

Randomized, double-blind trials have provided support for the benefit of Ginger in the management of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.

In four randomized trials with a total of 675 participants, Ginger in capsules (tasteless) was superior to placebo and in two trials, the efficacy of Ginger was similar to that of vitamin B6.
Furthermore, Ginger was not associated with other clinically significant side effects or with any increased risk of an adverse pregnancy outcome. Ginger is considered to be a food supplement and NOT a drug.

Conclusion:A pregnant woman should use Ginger and Vitamin B6 combined in an odorless, tasteless gel capsule as a first-line remedy for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. If this fails to relieve the symptoms, prescription medications can be considered.

You can read the entire article at http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMcp1003896 you can also order Dr. Brown's supplement's from Beute de Maman.