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According to a new study, deficit levels of vitamin C can pose risk to the mental health of newborn babies.
The study, which was conducted on guinea pigs, has revealed that lack vitamin C, have hippocampal neurones, which are 30% less than normal conditions. This vitamin C deficiency has also proved to have a negative effect on spatial memory.
The lead researcher Jens Lykkesfeldt has disclosed that human beings depend on diet for satisfying the vitamin C requirements for their body.
According to him, pregnant women as well as breast-feeding women, who have lower levels of vitamin C, can aggravate the impaired mental development in foetuses and newborns.
This vitamin seems quite important to brain activity.
Tests on mice have proved that mice, which could not absorb vitamin C, suffered from brain damage. The study has also proved that this is similar to the brain damage which is normally detected in premature babies, which later develops as learning and cognitive disabilities.
“We may thus be witnessing that children get learning disabilities because they have not gotten enough vitamin C in their early life,” said Lykkesfeldt, from Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen.
“This is unbearable when it would be so easy to prevent this deficiency by giving a vitamin supplement to high-risk pregnant women and new mothers," Lykkesfeldt added.
The study has been published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
