The Brewer Medical Diet for Normal and High-Risk Pregnancies
As any of you know who have read my work or heard me speak, I am a strong advocate of the late Dr. Brewer's views concerning the protective role of a good diet and adequate nutrition in pregnancy. As someone who was trained with this approach and who has direct clinical experience of Dr. Tom Brewer's dietary recommendations reducing the incidence of pre-eclampsia/eclampsia (toxemia) in what would be considered a high-risk population by any standards, I am keen to make sure that every pregnant person and every practitioner understand his approach. I am also aware that there is a boat load of misinformation, piece-meal understanding and prejudice against his ideas. The reasons for this lack of understanding and out right dismissal of his approach are several. For one, he refused to do randomized controlled trials, believing such a study to be unethical. His approach brings up basic inequities in access to healthy foods and the many related socioeconomic factors involved in this. His approach requires no drugs and no expensive tests, focusing instead on basic nutritional education. Nothing about his approach makes anybody any money. While every case of preeclampsia (a syndrome consisting of a constellation of symptoms that are usually, but not invariably positively influenced by dietary improvement) are not caused by nutritional inadequacy, many cases are.
There is a fabulous website that covers this topic in detail hosted by Joy Jones, an RN who knew Dr. Brewer personally for many years and who has educated and counseled many women on the protective benefits of ensuring that their diet is adequate for their individual needs.
Visit Joy's website at www.drbrewerpregnancydiet.com. This is a wonderful resource for you as well as an important link to give your clients. Much of the information on this site has been taken directly from Tom Brewer's writings as well as those of his former wife, Gail, with additional comments from Joy. Every woman needs to understand the basics of what happens to her blood volume during pregnancy, the role of the liver and how nutrition supports those necessary changes.
There is also another website that has somewhat less detailed information and which therefore might be more accessible for some women: therealblueribbonbaby.org. Note that this website was recently hacked and another illegitimate website by a similar name (blueribbonbaby) has been put up. The REAL blue ribbon baby site is the one you want. This is an official website that Tom Brewer himself endorsed.
Here is an interesting article that I ran across on the web addressing diet in pregnancy as it relates to toxemia.
http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/eclampsia.shtml