Anemia and Pregnancy

Anemia occurs to the person who has less number of red blood cells in the body. The low level of red blood cells decreased the oxygen supply in the body. Hence, the person feels weak and tired very soon. Anemia in pregnant women is very common, as they suffer from the loss of red blood cells and iron due to the bleeding during menstruation.

Generally, only pregnancy is not responsible for the anemia disease in women. Mostly it depends upon the body of that patient and her response to the immune deficiency. It becomes necessary to take the preventive steps for anemia disease during and after pregnancy period. Doctors, can test for the anemia twice a day in case of pregnant women.

Causes of Anemia in Pregnancy

  1. Iron Deficiency
    The loss of iron becomes a major cause of anemia in pregnancy. Most of the pregnant women suffer from the loss of irons that affects the red blood cell production. It is because the pregnant woman's body provides more iron to the fetus than other parts of the body. Therefore, the bone marrow lacks the enough supply of iron and fails to support the woman to defend herself from the anemia symptoms. It is observed that the iron deficiency has increased the risk of low birth weight and preterm birth.
  2. Folate Deficiency
    Folate deficiency increases the risk of anemia disease and the fetal alcohol syndrome. This deficiency occurs to around 1% pregnant women. If the folate deficiency is severe, the pregnant woman can suffer from the megaloblastic anemia. In some of the severe cases of megloblastic anemia the bone marrow examination is required.
  3. Illness
    In some of the cases, disease like thalassemia has decreased the count of red blood cells. Any disease that causes anemia must be treated at the early stages before it creates the anemic situation.

Symptoms
The anemia symptoms are not recognized by the pregnant women at early stage in most of the cases. The common symptoms of anemia during pregnancy are:

Treatment for Anemia in Pregnancy
A woman needs to take at least 15mg iron a day that will be enough to support the red blood cell production. In case of a pregnant woman, this amount of iron should be increased twice a day. There are two ways to prevent the anemia symptoms:

The iron rich foods are :

Foods with vitamin c are also beneficial in reducing the risk of anemia. Hence, women can include juices of tomato and orange in their daily diet.