did your moms skip prenatal vitamins?

[figgy]

My mother thinks its her fault that I have MS. She always wonders if it's because she didn't take prenatal vitamins when she was pregnant with me. They made her violently ill. Just wondering if any other MS'ers also had mothers who didn't take them. It's probably a very stretching theory. But I'm 26 and have many years ahead of wondering what the cause could be so it couldn't hurt to ask.

Women have had healthy babies for millennia before the invention of vitamins. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of posters here, as well as non-ms people around the world, are older than prenatals.

[Redwings]

Back when I was just a bun in the oven, there weren't any prenatal vitamins!


Seriously, there are so many factors that go into MS that prenatal vitamins aren't even a concern. Considering what's in commercial vitamin preparations, it's doubtful that they would have contained anything that would have made much, if any, difference to you or your mother. It looks like your mom isn't giving enough credit to the nutritious food she was eating at the time. Those carrots were more beneficial than a vitamin pill. If your mother was severely malnourished during her pregnancy, there might be a hint of possibility that your genes somehow mutated. But it doesn't sound like that's the case, and it would be a stretch anyhow.

There are two things that are believed to cause auto-immune diseases: a genetic predisposition and a triggering event. Your mom didn't have control over either of those and, with the current state of medical knowledge, you'll never know what both of those were. Science is just now learning about some of the genetic components of MS. Genetics, genomics, epigenetics and epigenomics are very complex aspects that contribute to the development and passing on of diseases like MS. Prenatal vitamins aren't. Now, if only you could convince your mom of that...