|
I will be adding to this list as I come across other inaccuracies.
I've seen comments on more than one website or message board that taught or implied that drinking a gallon of water a day
was part of the Brewer Diet, and/or would prevent pre-eclampsia or blood pressure problems.
The truth is that Dr. Brewer's view was that, while fluids are a necessary part of prenatal nutrition to prevent low blood
volume and dehydration, when the stomach gets crowded by the growing uterus a woman needs to be careful to not put anything
in that stomach that will not give her the nutrients and calories that she needs. So he recommended that she get her fluids
from milk and 100% juices (no sweeteners added). If a woman does drink a gallon of water a day, she could cause her stomach
to feel full, which could lead to her eating less food, which could lead to her not getting enough calories and protein and
sodium in her diet, which could lead to a falling blood volume, which could lead to various complications, including pre-eclampsia.
All the while, she could believe that she was on the Brewer Diet and that the diet was not working for her.
See info on this page about water
There are some herbal pregnancy teas, and possibly other pregnancy supplements, which contain nettle. Nettle has diuretic
properties.
There are also some supplements which contain dandelion. Dandelion also acts as a diuretic.
There are also some juices or supplements or teas which contain alfalfa, bilberry, or celery, all of which also have diuretic
properties.
Diuretics have been shown to be hazardous in normal pregnancies, and they are no safer in herbal form than they are in prescription
medications.
See here for information regarding how diuretics are hazardous during pregnancy
See here for information about the use of herbal diuretics in pregnancy
See here for a history of the Brewer Diet, including information about the effects of diuretics
In pregnancy, diuretics increase the mother's urinary output, which decreases her blood volume at the very time in
her life when her body is continually working to increase her blood volume. Then when the kidneys perceive that the
blood volume is too low, they secrete renin, which constricts the capillaries, which makes the blood pressure rise.
The kidneys also start to conserve fluid to try to raise the blood volume. But if there's not enough salt, calories, and
protein in the diet to create enough osmotic pressure to hold that fluid in the bloodstream, it will move out of the capillaries
into the tissues of the ankles, fingers, or face, thus creating edema (swelling).
If a woman is taking nettle or dandelion, being on the Brewer Diet may not be enough to keep her blood volume where it needs
to be, because of the diuretic actions of those herbs. In such a situation, the mother may see a rising blood pressure and
edema, in spite of her best efforts to follow the Brewer Diet.
I've seen at least one website that purported to list all the elements of the Brewer Diet. But it listed the 4 servings of
the "Milk Group" and the 2 servings of the "Egg Group" and all the other food groups on the Brewer Diet, but completely left
out the additional servings of the "Protein Group". If a woman followed that diet, she would be getting only 44 grams of protein
each day. As a result of the low level of protein, calories and sodium in that diet, a pregnant woman could follow the diet
thinking that she was on the Brewer Diet, and still develop complications from low blood volume, such as pre-eclampsia. Then
she could say that the Brewer Diet didn't work, when she wasn't really on it at all.
The truth is that the Brewer Diet includes 14 food groups (if you count snacks and supplements), including 4 servings of milk
products or milk substitutes, 2 servings of eggs, plus 6-8 1-oz servings of other proteins.
See the Basic Brewer Pregnancy Diet Plan here
Some prenatal classes teach that after the 4 servings of the "Milk Group", and the 2 servings of the "Egg Group", you need
only 2 3-oz servings from the "Protein Group". This could cause some confusion, since later Brewer books teach that the protein
servings should be 1 oz. each. If a woman followed the charts of this prenatal class and got only 2 servings of the "Protein
Group" and used the 1 oz. servings of the later Brewer books, she could think that she was on the Brewer Diet when she really
wasn't, and she could believe that the diet didn't work for her, when she wasn't actually on it.
The 2-serving version of the "Protein Group" was the recommendation from the first Brewer book written for consumers,
What Every Pregnant Woman Should Know. In that book the servings of protein were about 3 oz. each, with varying numbers
of grams of protein in each serving. In later books, the Brewers standardized the protein servings, so that following your
diet could be done without the need for protein counters. They changed the description of the diet to say that the mother
should have 6-8 servings from the "Protein Group", with each serving being 1 oz., instead of 3 oz.
See the Basic Brewer Pregnancy Diet Plan here
I've had feedback that there was a belief out there that the Brewer Diet recommended that the mother drink a gallon of milk
a day.
The truth is that the Brewer Diet recommends only 4 cups of milk a day, or the equivalent. For each cup of milk, the mother
can substitute a cup of yogurt, 1/4 cottage cheese, a large slice of cheese, or 1 cup soy milk. If the mother wants to add
more milk or milk products to satisfy some of the servings in the "Protein Group" that is permissable, but it's not required.
If a mother seems to be developing pre-eclampsia, she can increase her protein intake by eating 17-18 eggs a day and 2 quarts
of milk a day for 3 days. But that is a strategy that should be used only in special situations where the mother seems to
be developing elevated blood pressure or pre-eclampsia.
See more about responding to elevated blood pressure here
See more about pre-eclampsia here
You may see claims on some websites that Dr. Brewer or the Brewer Diet blames women for having developed pre-eclampsia and
other related complications.
The truth is that nothing could be further from the truth. Dr. Brewer got the most frustrated with doctors, with drug companies,
and with professional organizations which gave women low-salt and/or low-calorie diets and sometimes put them on diuretic
drugs, which put them on the track of a falling blood volume, which then helped them to develop pre-eclampsia or related complications.
His heart and passion and compassion were with the women who were the victims of this misguided medical care, and he did
all that he could to communicate to them the importance of their being their own advocates in this issue, in the absence of
that advocacy from their doctors. Women have known for a long time that they need to be their own advocates on many issues,
and this one is no different.
For more about how the Brewer Diet works see here
For more about how Dr. Brewer learned his perspective and tried to make a difference in the mainstream medical system see
here
Brewer: "Our culture has a long history of treating women as inferior, and that's especially true in medicine. Women who educate
themselves, listen to their bodies, stay away from prescription drugs, and feed themselves the way healthy women have fed
themselves for thousands of years, not the way Americans are feeding themselves today on low-fat, low-protein, high-carbohydrate,
low-salt, low-calorie foods--those enlightened women are going to have healthy, full-term pregnancies with no complications."
See here for more of this 2004 interview with Dr. Brewer in Townsend Letter
There are some mothers who, sometimes on their own and sometimes on the advice of their doctors or midwives, are concerned
about gaining more weight than they want to. So they may decide to eat the protein of the Brewer Diet without eating the
calories recommended by the Brewer Diet. By doing this they might believe themselves to be on the Brewer Diet, and when they
develop pre-eclampsia or related complications, they might conclude that the Brewer Diet must be a fallacy.
The truth is that the Brewer Diet is designed as a holistic way of facilitating the expansion of the mother's blood volume,
which is what her body is trying to do to preserve the pregnancy and nourish the baby. As part of that design, the diet includes
calories and salt and other nutrients, as well as protein. If the mother eats even just 1/3 less calories than Dr. Brewer
recommended (1/3 less than 2600 is about 1700), her body will resort to burning half of her protein intake for
calories, and her blood volume will not be able to keep up with her body's needs. So even if she's eating 80-120 grams of
protein, her body will be able to use only 40-60 of it for albumin-making, blood building, uterus building, and baby building,
and the mother who believes that she's following the Brewer Diet might develop pre-eclampsia and come to the conclusion that
it didn't work for her and therefore must be a fallacy.
For more information about weight gain see here
See here for information on the dangers of a low-carb diet in pregnancy
There are some mothers who, sometimes on their own and sometimes on the advice of their doctors or midwives, are concerned
about the issue of edema, or swelling. So they may decide to eat the protein of the Brewer Diet without eating the salt recommended
by the Brewer Diet. By doing this they might believe themselves to be on the Brewer Diet, and when they develop pre-eclampsia
or related complications, they might conclude that the Brewer Diet must be a fallacy.
The truth is that the Brewer Diet is designed as a holistic way of facilitating the expansion of the mother's blood volume,
which is what her body is trying to do to preserve the pregnancy and nourish the baby. As part of that design, the diet includes
calories and salt and other nutrients, in addition to the protein. When there is adequate salt/sodium in the mother's bloodstream,
it has osmotic pressure which can pull fluid out of the mother's tissues (ankles, fingers, and face) for the body to use in
its efforts to expand the blood volume. If the mother eats less salt than Dr. Brewer recommended, her body may not be able
to hold the fluid in her circulation, and it can move from her capillaries out into her tissues, and she may develop the very
edema she was trying to prevent, and her blood volume will not be able to keep up with her body's needs. So even if she's
eating 80-120 grams of protein, her body might not be able to expand her blood volume adequately, and the mother who believes
that she's following the Brewer Diet might develop pre-eclampsia and come to the conclusion that it didn't work for her.
For more about swelling see here
For more about salt see here
You may have heard the claim that no studies have ever been done on the Brewer Diet, and that it was never published for peer-review
or confirmed by subsequent research.
The truth is that Dr. Brewer based his own research and practice and writings on the work of many other researchers who came
before him, and that his work was published in many professional journals, and that his work was supported by other independent
studies done in his own time. Some of those studies are listed in his books, and I am posting those studies on this website,
and I will add to them as I am able.
See here for a timeline of the Brewer Diet history and development
For a list of some of those studies see here
For more on this research and others see here
Here are Dr. Brewer's own words:
"After I finished my five-year contract with the clinics of Contra Costa County, I stayed on and worked with the people who
were hired to do a statistical study. I'd spent two years in Richmond, then two years at the county hospital in Martinez,
and then went to Pittsburgh, California, so I had worked at all three of the major county clinics. The data showed improvement
in every category. There was a period during which the Pittsburgh clinic continued to use conventional methods while I used
nutrition in the Richmond and Martinez clinics, so we used the Pittsburgh clinic as a control. The Pittsburgh clinic had 10
times more hypertension in first pregnancies than the Richmond and Martinez clinics. Those findings were published in the
Journal of Reproductive Medicine as a preliminary report. (51) A team of eight government researchers spent three years going
over 5600 cases. They studied every blood pressure reading, every urinalysis, and every other test recorded on the charts,
and they verified our results."
See here for more of this 2004 interview with Dr. Brewer in Townsend Letter
This response comes from an article by Amy Hass, in Midwifery Today.
"The fact is that research has been done on this subject, but with the exception of folic acid, it stopped somewhere around
the 1980s when the focus shifted to drugs as the answer to curing all ills. The research that was done was not widely accepted
due to the fact that it could not include clinically controlled studies. It would not show common sense or ethics to starve
a group of pregnant women in order to supply a control group. The researchers did the logical thing and used the women's previous
diet and circumstances as the control (Brewer 1982). The results were amazing. Dr. Tom Brewer totally eradicated preeclampsia
in specific populations where the former rates were upwards of 40 percent. He had the women eat a healthy, varied, well-balanced
diet that included high quality foods, adequate protein and complex carbohydrates. He also had them drink water to thirst,
salt to taste and avoid drugs. Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health refused to publish the results because he
couldn't do a clinically controlled study.
So what's the problem with pregnancy nutrition? The standard medical community does not believe that women need to eat this
way. Doctors keep saying that they don't know the cause of preeclampsia, but they are madly searching for a 'magic pill' or
single cause to shed some light on the mystery..."
"...This attitude means that the majority of women receive no education on nutrition in pregnancy. Desperate treatments of
preeclampsia, such as diuretics, elimination of salt intake and calorie and weight gain restriction, only exacerbate the problem
by further reducing and restricting much-needed blood volume (called hypovolemia) and reducing the blood supply to the placenta
and fetus."
See here for the rest of "Preventing Complications with Nutrition", by Amy Haas
You may have heard the claim that Dr. Brewer was just the author of "a bunch of pop pregnancy books."
The truth is that Dr. Brewer first became interested in MTLP before he became a medical student, when his Russian neighbor
was describing the horrific effects of the WWII starvation in Russia on pregnant mothers. Tom continued his interest in MTLP/pre-eclampsia
when he was a medical student and read in his obstetrics textbook about the "'nutritional' theory of the origin of toxemia
based on work done by Maurice Strauss and Bertha Burke at Harvard and Ferguson's work [one of his professors] seemed to confirm
it." He continued to study this perspective as he progressed through medical school and internship. While there, he observed
the treatments for pre-eclampsia that were the standards of care at that time, and the outcomes of those treatments, a process
that included "thousands of hours spent pouring over scientific reports." He went on to work for a couple of years in private
general practice in Fulton, Missouri, which included the care of 100 pregnancies with only one case of pre-eclampsia--one
case in which the woman was poor and malnourished and had had no prenatal care. "In 1958, Dr. Brewer completed a residency
in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Miami Medical School where he was also a research fellow at the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute, studying the formation of collagen in the uterus during pregnancy, a process that is directly linked to
efficiency of labor."* Then, "in his last year at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, Tom became chief OB/GYN resident with
the authority to test one of the results of his research: a new method of managing the mother acutely ill with MTLP...human
serum albumin...It worked...Since then other researchers have confirmed his clinical trials." Dr. Brewer later supervised
a demonstration toxemia prevention project in the prenatal clinics of Contra Costa County, California. The project started
in 1963 and continued for 12 1/2 years. During this time, "Tom supervised the prenatal management of over seven thousand
mothers from the lowest income group in the San Francisco Bay area," and the incidence of toxemia among these mothers "was
0.5 percent, with no cases reaching the convulsive stage." During this time he also "published journal articles about the
project and began lecturing at medical meetings and hospitals around the country." It wasn't until 1977 that Dr. Brewer and
his wife Gail finally turned to writing directly to the mothers themselves, teaching them how to be advocates for themselves
in the absence of that advocacy from their doctors.
To read the chapter the quotes in this paragraph are taken from see here
See here for a timeline of the development of the Brewer Diet
*Obituary on website of American College of Traditional Midwives
You may have heard the claim that Dr. Brewer's work is not supported by the current research.
The truth is that much of the current research is deeply colored by the biases of the researchers. Those biases include the
belief that the Brewer Diet is quackery, that his studies cannot be accurately reproduced without jeopardizing the mothers
and babies being studied, and that the only safe way to study women with pre-eclampsia is to keep them on mainstream-approved
"anti-hypertensive therapies" (which usually includes low-salt, low-calorie diets).
Another truth is that I don't know that there is no current research that supports Dr. Brewer's views. When I find current
research or peer-reviewed studies that may support Brewer's views, I will post it on this website.
Another truth is that at least some of the current research doesn't seem to entirely rule out Brewer's views, as his opponents
claim that they do. At first glance some of it appears to simply be describing various functions of the placenta and other
parts of the pregnant body that Brewer also described, albeit from an end-stage perspective rather than a beginning-stage
perspective.
"Q: Scientists recently announced that certain proteins secreted by the placenta rise significantly in mothers experiencing
eclampsia, suggesting that these proteins cause eclampsia. (80,82) Are these findings significant?
Dr. Brewer: Research that's focused on "genetics" or speculative biochemical enzymatic equations never addresses the underlying
cause of an illness or condition. I don't doubt that unusual proteins are produced by a starving fetus or a starving mother,
but those proteins don't cause eclampsia. They're just another symptom. Inadequate nutrition causes eclampsia.
In a New Zealand sheep experiment published in the journal Science, none of the ewes on a normal diet had premature births,
but half of the ewes that were put on a moderate weight-loss diet at the time of conception gave birth prematurely. (83) The
researchers decided that a mother's diet before and around the time she conceives can profoundly influence the length of pregnancy,
and they called this a stunning scientific breakthrough. This is what I mean about medical researchers knowing nothing about
nutrition. It's obvious, but they didn't have a clue.
Sheep have been studied before, and they have shown all the same symptoms and problems that humans have. In one study, pregnant
sheep were starved at the very end of their pregnancies, and most of them died. Other researchers have found that sheep giving
birth to twins, triplets, or quadruplets are more likely to have toxemia than those giving birth to single lambs.
This is true for humans, too. A woman pregnant with twins has to eat for three, for herself and each of her babies, and a
woman pregnant with triplets has to eat for four. It isn't easy to do this, but the more good nutrition a woman can provide
for her developing babies, the healthier they will be. (72)"
See here for more of this 2004 interview with Dr. Brewer in Townsend Letter
I have heard that some pro-Brewer prenatal class teachers and midwives have been very rude and callous with their clients
when they have developed pre-eclampsia. I have heard that some of them have told their clients that if they had eaten correctly,
they wouldn't have gotten pre-eclampsia. I have heard that some of them would not return the phone calls of these clients
once they developed pre-eclampsia.
I believe these stories. When I first heard them, I was speechless with shock. I was appalled that a care-giver could respond
to any pregnant woman in this way, let alone a pregnant woman who is courageously fighting for her own life and that of her
baby, and who is in severe emotional pain, and who needs all the support and love and practical help that she can get.
I believe that most prenatal class teachers and midwives are more sensitive and wise than to respond to their clients in such
a horrendous way. I advise all of those prenatal class teachers and midwives who may not be so wise to take great care to
not respond to their clients in this way, and to take great pains to not even say words that might mistakenly be received
in this way. I advise them to receive these clients with great tenderness and compassion and to ask them what they can do
that would feel the most helpful and supportive to these clients.
I also advise prenatal class teachers and midwives to pay close attention to any morning sickness or other digestive disorders
that their clients might experience, and to treat them aggressively with homeopathy, herbs, and nutritional adjustments.
The lack of food that the mother experiences during these times could be enough to throw her into a pre-eclampsia process.
See here for homeopathy suggestions for morning sickness
See here for a resource for herbal responses to morning sickness
I also advise teachers and midwives to spend more time with their mothers who have blood pressures that are creeping up.
Avoid sending them home with vague instructions to eat a little more protein. Explain the importance of expanding their blood
volumes and how the body works on that process. Encourage them to eat something with protein in it every hour that they are
awake, including a bedside snack for middle-of-the-night wakings. Take a thorough history to discern their lifestyle. Find
out whether they are on an exercise program, or have a lot of stress in their lives, or work or live in over-heated conditions,
or love to garden even when it's hot outside--conditions which could lead to their losing extra calories or salt. If they
do have these factors in their lifestyle, talk with them about ways to add extra calories and salt to their diet, and possibly
ways to modify their lifestyle so that they don't lose as many calories or as much salt. Talk with them about ways to lessen
the stress in their lives, and thus burn fewer calories. Have them monitor their blood pressures a couple of times a day,
at the same times every day, while you are discerning whether these changes are making an effective difference. Encourage
them to call you once a day with their most recent blood pressure readings, and more often if they become concerned. If necessary,
send a midwife's note to their employers, prescribing a change in work responsibilities or conditions.
See here for more information on elevated blood pressures
I have heard some people confuse the physiology of chronic hypertension with the physiology of "pregnancy induced hypertension."
They ask how extra protein can be good for "PIH", if it's not good for non-pregnant people with chronic hypertension.
The truth is that the pregnant body works differently than the non-pregnant body does. The causes of chronic hypertension
in the non-pregnant body range from stress, arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis to kidney diseases, adrenal tumors, and coartation
of the aorta. In those cases you might want to watch the amount of protein that the patient eats. But in pregnancy, if those
diseases have been ruled out, proteins are necessary for maintaining the healthy nourishment of the kidneys and liver so that
they can meet the extra stresses of pregnancy, for the formation of serum albumin, and for the maintainance of a healthy blood
volume. This is a mechanism that occurs only in pregnancy.
Another truth is that often those who object in this vein may not understand that the protein needed in pregnancy can come
from a variety of places--beans, nuts, dairy products, fish, and chicken. The protein needed in pregnancy does not need to
come from sources which may also come with a high-cholesterol component.
See here for the vegetarian versions of the Brewer Diet
I've heard from some people who are apparently confusing the physiology of pregnancy with the physiology of congestive heart
failure, or kidney failure, or circulatory problems that come with old age. They question how adding extra salt to a diet
for pregnancy can be good for the edema of pregnancy, when extra salt is not good for people with edema caused by congestive
heart failure, kidney failure, or the poor circulation of old age.
The truth is that in congestive heart failure, kidney failure and the circulatory problems of old age, the patient's body
is dealing with a blood volume which is abnormally expanded, and one of the symptoms of this condition can be edema. This
is a disease process that must be dealt with.
The pregnant body has a different agenda than that of the non-pregnant body dealing with congestive heart failure and other
diseases. One of the most important tasks of the pregnant body is to continually work on increasing the blood volume,
which it needs to do in order to maintain the placenta in a healthy way. When this process is hindered by the lack of salt
or albumin, there may not be adequate osmotic pressure to hold fluids within the circulation, and fluids will move out from
the capillaries to the tissues (ankles, fingers, face), and you will see edema. In this situation, the edema can be a sign
of a falling blood volume, rather than an abnormally expanded blood volume, and the mother's blood volume can drop to dangerously
low levels--life-threatening levels. One of the ways to pull those fluids out of the tissues and back into the circulation
is to increase the osmotic pressure in the bloodstream, by adding salt and protein to the diet.
See here for more information about salt in pregnancy
I've heard objections from some people who are apparently confusing the Brewer Diet with the high-protein, low-carbohydrate
Atkins Diet.
The truth is that the Brewer Diet is not a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. The level of protein that it recommends is
higher than that which is recommended by the ACOG diet, but the level of protein in the Brewer Diet is only 80-120 grams of
protein (except in special circumstances, such as multiple births and pre-eclampsia). But it is most emphatically true that
the Brewer Diet is NOT a low-carbohydrate diet. The Brewer Diet calls for a minimum of 2600 calories a day, and if someone
tries to eat the proteins of the Brewer Diet without the calories of the Brewer Diet, they most likely will not be able to
sustain their blood volume at the level that their pregnant body needs, and they are at risk of developing pre-eclampsia and/or
other related complications.
See here for the Basic Brewer Diet Plan
See here for information on the dangers of a low-carb diet in pregnancy
Some women who've had pre-eclampsia believe that if they'd not had anti-hypertensive drugs, they would have developed strokes,
and seizures, and worse.
The truth is that Dr. Brewer was able to successfully treat women with pre-ecalmpsia without the use of anti-hypertensive
drugs. This was his intervention program:
1) The mothers with pre-eclampsia "were placed on a high-protein (120 grams per day) diet."
2) "The mothers were placed on regular, rather than salt-restricted diets. A salt shaker appeared on the tray at each meal
and the mother was instructed to salt her food to taste."
3) "The women were encouraged to stay out of bed as much as possible, even to do the chores on the ward if they were willing,
rather than being ordered to the customary bedrest."
4) "Diuretics and drugs to lower blood pressures were not used."
5) "Following the work of Poth, on the most effective way to suppress bacterial flora in the bowel, patients received oral
antibiotics to reduce the detoxication load on their damaged livers."
6) "Tom personally discussed the program with each mother to obtain her permission and cooperation, then made a conscientious
effort to see that each followed her diet well."
Any research study which claims to try to duplicate Tom's results and does not follow the above steps is flawed and unreliable.
It is also true that while he was the chief OB/GYN resident at Jackson Memorial Hospital Dr. Brewer was successful in treating
13 out of 14 mothers "acutely ill with MTLP" (pre-eclampsia) with serum albumin, although they had initially been treated
with diuretics. The 14th mother "had a normal serum albumin concentration and minimal edema" and "she delivered soon after
admission...In none of these patients was the infusion of albumin associated with a significant rise in blood pressure, increase
in pulse rate, nor with any increase in the severity of symptoms of the disease."
Later research conducted by Dr. Stella Cloren and Dr. Peggy Howard, done independently of each other, confirmed Dr. Brewer's
findings. In Dr. Howard's "Albumin concentrate can be used for pre-eclampsia," of OB/GYN News, Oct. 1, 1974, "All of the toxemic
women given 50 grams of serum albumin daily gave birth to babies in good health. Infusions of serum albumin improved renal
function, increased estriol excretion, prevented eclamptic convulsions, and resulted in a reduction in perinatal mortality
to one-fourth the rate of the 'controls' and eradication of abruptio placentae."
See here for most of the quotes used in this paragraph
See this source (p. 15-16) for the rest of the quotes from this paragraph
In fact, in a 2004 interview for Townsend Letter, Dr. Brewer described the further damage that can be caused
by anti-hypertensive drugs, to mothers' livers and kidneys already ravaged by the pre-eclampsia process...
Brewer: "Low blood volume, which is the inevitable result of dehydration and the use of diuretics, contributes directly to
eclampsia, premature birth, and low birth weight. (23,35,36,38) And now there's a whole group of hypertension drugs that have
come out in the last 10 to 15 years. These drugs just ravage women. They cause direct damage to all of the cells in the mother's
body, particularly to the liver, a little to the kidneys, and then to the placenta and fetus."
See here for more of this 2004 interview with Dr. Brewer in Townsend Letter
See here for a timeline of the Brewer Diet history and development
Anne Frye recommends having the mother eat a high protein item every waking hour. She also suggests, "Initially recommend
an increase to 150 to 200 grams of protein daily (250 to 350 grams or more with multiple gestations), with 3,000 to 4,000
calories and 500 mg of choline daily...If the woman has a history of liver disorders, recommend less protein (120-150 grams
for a single fetus); her liver may be overwhelmed otherwise, and monitor her lab work closely for changes...Once liver enzymes
and blood proteins have normalized, the hemoglobin has dropped appropriately, the fetus is an appropriate size for dates and
secondary symptoms have subsided, the woman can cut back to 100 grams of protein daily (150 grams with multiples)."
See here for more information on the best ways to treat pre-eclampsia
There are some who say that they were on the Brewer Diet and were well-nourished and it didn't work for them, so therefore
it must be a fallacy.
There are some who say that they have seen women who were well-nourished and who still got pre-eclampsia, so therefore it
must be a fallacy.
At least part of the truth is that there are other diseases that look like pre-eclampsia but aren't pre-eclampsia. The doctors
need to do a thorough differential diagnosis on all their patients, and not jump to snap judgments when they see symptoms
that look like pre-eclampsia.
Some of the diseases which can look like pre-eclampsia/eclampsia include urinary tract infections, kidney infections, glomerulonephritis
(Bright's disease), chronic pyelonephritis, kidney cysts and tumors, chronic hypertension, pheochromocytoma, epilepsy, brain
tumor, coarctation of the aorta, hyperthyroidism, molar pregnancy, and heart failure. One of the dangers in jumping to the
conclusion that the mother's symptoms indicate that she is developing pre-eclampsia is that if she is not developing pre-eclampsia
her true illness will not get treated. Another danger is that in the process of treating her for pre-eclampsia with mainstream
"standards of care" and "anti-hypertensive therapies", which often include low-salt, low-calorie diets, she might well develop
the pre-eclampsia that initially she did not have.
Doctors should also be more diligent about taking a history that includes an accounting of what supplements and herbal teas
the mother is using. Any supplements or herbal teas or juices which contain nettle, dandelion, celery, or alfalfa could be
contributing to the "toxemia syndrome" which they are seeing, since all of these herbs have diuretic properties.
See here for more information on mistaken diagnoses
|
