If You Can't Quit Smoking During Pregnancy, This Vitamin Can Help Your Baby

Giving up your vices is no easy task during pregnancy, especially when they extend beyond overindulging in caffeine. Quitting smoking isn’t a topic we address too often, but it’s a real challenge for some of our users. So far, the only thing that has really done the trick, for better or worse,is a financial incentive. With that in mind, a new study started to examine what could help offset the harm of smoking to baby instead.

While researchers emphasize this is not an alternative to quitting, daily vitamin C supplements during pregnancy can help improve newborn lung function when mom’s a smoker. And by the time they’re a year old, babies whose moms took vitamin C demonstrate less wheezing.

To conduct the study, which was published by the American Thoracic Society, researchers recruited 252 pregnant women who smoked an average of seven cigarettes a day, spending the duration of the study encouraging them to quit. At the same time, they administered half of the women a daily dose of supplemental vitamin C (500 mg). The other half received a placebo. Once their babies arrived, researchers administered the speed at which air could come out of their lungs, a measurement called force expiratory flow (FEF).

Researchers tested FEFs at 3 months and 12 months old, evaluating the percentage of air left in the lungs each time. At 3 months, babies whose mothers took vitamin C during pregnancy scored better in two out of three categories tested. By 12 months, they scored better across the board.

While researchers need to do more testing to find out exactly why vitamin C offers a protective effect for the lungs, they speculate that it blocks collagen deposits that form around the airways from smoke and nicotine exposure, and/or prevents epigenetic changes from in-utero tobacco exposure.

Still, chugging orange juice is not the same as kicking the habit. According to lead author Cynthia McEvoy, MD, “getting women to quit smoking during pregnancy has to be priority one."

Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances.