KEY TAKEAWAYS • Start at least one month before trying to conceive. The neural tube closes in the first 28 days of pregnancy, often before a pregnancy is known • Folic acid and iron are the two non negotiable ingredients. A product missing either is not doing the core job • Iodine is often missing from prenatal products, and deficiency affects fetal brain development • Avoid high dose vitamin A as retinol. Beta carotene is the safe form • Anaemia affects r

Magnesium is involved in more than 300 enzyme reactions in the body, including muscle contraction, nerve signalling, blood sugar regulation and bone formation. It is also one of the minerals people most commonly fall short on, largely because the richest sources are foods that modern diets have quietly dropped. How much you need Recommended daily intake for adults is approximately 400 to 420 mg for men and 310 to 320 mg for women. Requirements rise during pregnancy, to around

Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant in the world and one of the best studied. For most healthy adults it is safe in moderation and carries some genuine benefits. The two things worth knowing are where the limit sits and how long it stays in your system, because the second one explains most caffeine related sleep problems. The daily limit for healthy adults Health authorities generally place the upper limit at 400 mg per day for healthy adults, roughly four cups of brew

Fiber is one of the few areas of nutrition where the advice is settled and the shortfall is enormous. Most adults need 25 to 38 grams a day. Most adults get around half that. Closing that gap is one of the highest return dietary changes available, and it does not require giving anything up. The two types and why both matter Soluble fiber dissolves in water and forms a gel. It slows digestion, helps steady blood sugar, and lowers LDL cholesterol. It is found in oats, beans, ap

Intermittent fasting changes when you eat rather than what you eat. That simplicity is most of its appeal. It is also the source of most of the confusion around it, because the eating window is only half of the equation. The common approaches • Time restricted eating, often described as 16:8, where eating is confined to an 8 hour window each day. This is the most widely used version • The 5:2 approach, eating normally on five days and substantially reducing intake on

High blood pressure is often called the silent condition because most people with it have no symptoms at all. It is usually found during a routine check rather than because something felt wrong. That is exactly why the numbers are worth understanding. What the two numbers mean A reading is written as one number over another, for example 118/76 mmHg. • Systolic, the top number, is the pressure in your arteries when the heart beats • Diastolic, the bottom number, is the

There is no single average height for women, because the figure changes substantially depending on where you look. The global average for adult women sits somewhere around 159 to 161 cm, roughly 5 feet 3 inches, but national averages range across more than 20 cm from the tallest countries to the shortest. Average female height by country These are approximate adult figures drawn from national health surveys. Survey years and methods differ, so treat them as close estimates ra

Stress is not the enemy. The physical stress response is what lets you meet a deadline, react to a near miss on the road, or perform under pressure. The problem is stress that does not switch off. When the response stays active for weeks or months, it stops being useful and starts doing damage. What stress does to the body Under threat, real or perceived, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol. Heart rate rises, breathing quickens, muscles tense, digestion slows. This is

The paleo diet asks a simple question: if humans spent roughly 2.5 million years eating what they could hunt and gather, and only about 10,000 years eating farmed grains and dairy, should our plates look more like the first period than the second? That idea has made paleo one of the most searched eating patterns in the world. Whether it holds up depends on which claim you are testing. What the paleo diet actually is Paleo is built around whole, unprocessed foods and removes e