As I was writing my other blog post about coffee and tea, I found something really interesting. Apparently caffeine can increase a chance of a miscarriage happening during pregnancy. Thus I found a new topic to write about.  It got me wondering what is the appropriate amount of caffeine to have during pregnancy.

Ever since the 1980s, researchers having being seeing caffeine as a potential as to why miscarriages happen. This is especially in cases where women drink more than one drink a day with caffeine.

One study done by De-Kun Li looked into this at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research back between October 1996-1998 and used about 1063 pregnant women.  They “examined the caffeine effect among women who never changed their pattern of consumption during their pregnancy.” If the consumption was more than 200 mg then there was a higher risk of miscarriage. When its less than 200mg the risk is much lower.  Before the study was conducted some questions were asked of the women like the type of drink, frequency, etc.  The results were very surprising to me when i saw them.  About 172 women had miscarriages while the other 891 did not. Most women had consumed either no caffeine or up to 200,g, while the ones that had, consumed more over 200 mg.

Some people had doubts that caffeine alone could just cause a risk in marriage. There were sure to be other factors involved and NHS was sure to find out. During the questioning, “some women had already miscarried by the time of their enrollment interview, and they were only asked about caffeine consumption up to the end of their pregnancy.” The result from this is that the caffeine consumption from these women is that the estimation could have been off. Another thing is that the women were asked to remeber the last time they drank before their last period. Some women might forget and lie. Doing this can mess up the measurements recorded and the study would be shot.

There was another study done similar to this one but instead of 1000, it was 5000 women. They participated in a Danish sudy that lasted from 2007-10.  “Women recorded the amount of caffeinated beverages they drank daily on questionaires before conception and during early pregnancy. ” This included logging in coffe, tea, and soda. The results of this study were less surprising than the other and it was that 732 women had miscarriages. Caffeine before becoming pregnant has no effect for the risk, but when the milligrams start rising thats when it becomes a problem.

According to both studies, once the caffeine crosses the placenta and hits the fetuses problems start to arise. It eliminates very slowly from the fetus, and since their metabolism is not very developed it goes crazy. Thats why both say if we need caffeine to just have one or less drink.

After seeing this new information about what impact caffeine can have on pregnancy, I will be staying far away from it when I’m pregnant. This is a risk thats more likely to happen than meeting kim kardashian as talked about in class.