TREsos natal vs elevit

When it comes to finding a prenatal supplement, it’s important not to let advertising hype (and influencers who are being paid the big bucks) sway your purchasing choices. Finding a prenatal should be about supporting any possible deficiencies in your nutritional intake with the highest quality supplements possible.

Obviously in an ideal world we would all be eating perfectly, such as organic vegetables and fruits, with minimally processed foods, but that’s rarely the case. A prenatal supplement is designed to fill any nutritional gaps so that your future baby can grow healthy and strong.

The tricky part as a consumer is that marketing hype will often make a product seem fantastic, but the truth is a little more complex. Let take a closer look at Tresos Natal and Elevit. Below we will take a look at and compare some of the vitamins found in Treso Natal and Elevit.

Iron

Let’s look at iron. A product might claim to have high levels of iron, Elevit boasts 60mg of iron, but the form that iron is in is actually what impacts it’s absorbability. Iron in the form of ferrous fumarate (as found in Elevit) will have trouble absorbing well in your gut. An amino acid chelate form of iron (found in Tresos Natal) can be used in smaller amounts in your vitamin tablet because it is a protein bound molecule that absorbs better, making it what we call more ‘bioavailable’. A fancy word for how much of it your body can actually utilise well. Ferrous fumarate may cause gastrointestinal discomfort for some people, not ideal if you are taking a high dose, iron in the form of amino acid chelate is gentler on the stomach.

Folate

The form of folate in your prenatal is really critical to how well you can absorb it, and whether or not your body is protecting your baby against neural tube defects. Elevit contains high levels of folic acid, folic acid is a synthetic form of folate which needs to be converted by the MTHFR enzyme in order to be used by your body. A certain portion of the population have a gene polymorphism (meaning a variation from the norm) that reduces their ability to absorb the common form of folate, folic acid. If you have this gene polymorphism, you may not be able to process folic acid. The bioactive version of folate, known as folinic acid or levomefolate calcium (5-MTHF) is important, because everyone that takes folate in one of these forms can gain the neural tube-protective benefits from the supplement. Tresos Natal contains 5-MTHF, the bioactive form of folic acid, which is ideal if you are unsure of your MTHFR status and want to cover your bases. You can read more about the MTHFR gene defect here.

Choline

Choline is important in neutral tube development, memory formation, cell membrane integrity and fetal brain development. Tresos Natal contains choline, Elevit does not.

Both supplements are suitable to be taken from pre conception, throughout pregnancy and during breastfeeding. Both require you to take one tablet per day. Tresos Natal is practitioner prescribed, Elevit is avalaible from chemists and supermarkets. At the time of writing, Tresos Natal costs $80.53 RRP for 90 tablets and Elevit costs $79.99 RRP for 100 capsules.

Final Thoughts

As a consumer, it’s important to remember that the largest quantity of a vitamin in your supplement doesn’t actually make the supplement better, it’s the ability of that vitamin to be absorbed that counts. As a Doctor of Chinese Medicine who also has a Master of Reproductive Medicine, Kim has done all the research into various prenatal vitamins, and she chooses to prescribe Eagle Tresos Natal to patients, rather than the more common Elevit for the reasons above. If you would like to discuss your prenatal health, and access her advice on the best prenatal nutritional supplements for you, you can book a Telehealth appointment with Kim.

Source:

Effectiveness of iron formats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24652170