“I’ve delivered literally thousands of babies over the past 30+ years,” says a smiling Dr. Doug Odom, M.D., an obstetrician and gynecologist in Jackson, Mississippi. “And I’ve talked with expectant mothers about the importance of good nutrition ever since I started practicing. But it wasn’t until Juice Plus+® came along that I felt really comfortable recommending anything more than prenatal vitamins.
“I was always worried that something I recommended could turn out to be harmful to my patients,” he explains. “Juice Plus+® is whole food based nutrition – a wide variety of nutritional elements from a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. That just made good sense to me from the very first time I heard about it. On top of that, it’s backed by a whole body of published, peer-reviewed clinical research that’s impressive in terms of both quantity and quality. “You never see that with other nutritional products.”
Dr. Odom began sharing Juice Plus+® with his patients in May 1998. “I started noticing improvements here and there, but we really saw it in the expectant moms. Pregnancy is a very physically demanding nine months: There’s such a rapid acceleration of tissue growth and, as a result, a rapid acceleration of free radical damage [oxidative stress]. I’ve always recommended ‘standard issue’ prenatal vitamins. But we started to see healthier pregnancies more often when I started to add Juice Plus+® to the regimen.”
Over time, Dr. Odom and his nursing staff noticed that with the Juice Plus+® moms, they were seeing fewer Caesarean deliveries (“C- sections”), fewer premature deliveries, and a lower incidence of preeclampsia – a condition of late pregnancy that is characterized by high blood pressure and that can be potentially life- threatening to both mother and baby. They also noticed that the newborns of these moms tended to have higher birth weights, fewer admissions to neonatal intensive care units, and a lower incidence of respiratory distress syndrome.
“It made sense to me that better nutrition would lead to healthier moms,” Dr. Odom recalls. “So, I decided to get a little more formal about my Juice Plus+® observations. Dr. Odom took his observations one step further, carefully documenting and analyzing the outcome of more than 350 pregnancies within his group practice over an almost three-year period
Dr. Odom offers a simple explanation: “Healthier moms have healthier babies.”
Dr. Odom presented these findings to his medical colleagues at the annual meeting of the Central Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in October 2003. The findings are also being published as a “retrospective descriptive analytic comparison” in the March 2006 issue of JANA, the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association.
Tips for Pregnant and Breast-feeding Women
- Pregnant and breast-feeding women may use Juice Plus+® as a part of a healthy lifestyle along with other recommendations by their physicians such as taking prenatal vitamins.
- Taking two Juice Plus+ Orchard Blend® and two Juice Plus+ Garden Blend® capsules (2+2) every day, along with standard prenatal vitamins, will not result in an unhealthy excess of any one vitamin or mineral.
- Most physicians and other medical experts recommend that expectant mothers supplement their diets with 400 micrograms of folate per day. Taking four Juice Plus+® capsules (2+2) every day satisfies this requirement.
- Always inform your physician of anything you add or change in your usual diet or health regimen.
(Published in The Health and Wellness Newsletter from the Makers of Juice Plus+®, Spring/Summer 2006)
