Importance of folic acid: A preventative for spina bifida and anencephaly

I recently came across an article on a website called the odyssey online by Ryan McGreal (for the original article go to the link shown). In this article he talks about Folic Acid and how it helps with the prevention of both Spina Bifida and Anencephaly, which are types of neural tub defects.

He talks about North Carolina which has the highest percentage of neural tube defects, which leads to Spina Bifida, in the United States. This comes out to be 1 in 33 babies born in North Carolina. Haiti is the country with the highest percentage in the world. As far as Canada, where I’m from, spina bifida affects one out of every 1200 children born.

Folic acid is also known as the chemical folate which is a B vitamin, known as B9. It is found in many different types of foods, such as multivitamins, leafy greens, vegetables, beans and many more, some of which you can see below in the graphic. When this chemical is found in food it is called folate. Folic acid is hard to absorb through foods because how the digestive system processes it. Only about half of the amount of it that is consumed in food is absorbed. The biggest thing to remember is that absorption is different for everyone and it can depend on how the food is cooked or what food it is.

There are two main types of neural tube defects: Anencephaly and Spina Bifida. Neural tube defects come from the way the spinal cord is enclosed at the top and bottom of the spine. If the spinal cord fails to close completely at the bottom or anywhere along it, Spina Bifida occurs. I explain what Spina Bifida is and how it affects me in this post. The other is Anencephaly which is a fatal condition that causes the brain to be partially formed or not formed at all. This happens when the top of the neural tube has issues closing. The prognosis is usually stillborn, spontaneous loss, or neonatal death in the case of Anencephaly.

The hardest thing about Folic Acid is that the researchers studying its effects do not know why it helps the neural tube defects or if it could help with other birth defects. In the united states, the FDA has suggested that women take folic acid daily in childbearing ages and in at least the first 3 months of pregnancy.