Is there too much folate in Baby & Me 2?Updated 2 months ago

Our Baby & Me 2 prenatal was designed to remain in accordance with the official recommendation of the US Preventive Task Force: women who could become pregnant should take a daily supplement containing 400-800 mcg of folic acid (1). All of the research that has been done on the prevention of neural tube defects was conducted on folic acid, not dietary folate. As for getting too much folate, the reason the Institute of Medicine (IOM) set an upper tolerable limit level of 1000 mcg, or 1 mg, of folic acid per day was to prevent the “masking” of vitamin B12 deficiency (2), something you don’t want to miss as it can damage the nervous system. There were about 100 cases/reports of nerve damage when people took 5 mg per day of folic acid. The IOM used a safety factor of 5, which is how they arrived at the 1 mg per day tolerable upper limit. 

So, how did we address these issues when crafting our Baby & Me 2 Prenatal? We split the difference between the 400-800 mcg folic acid recommendation and chose to include 600 mcg in the form of L-5-MTHF.  We were very intentional in this choice.  Folic acid has no biological activity until it is reduced in the body to its active 5-MTHF form.  L-5-MTHF does not need to be reduced, it is already biologically active. In addition, L-methylfolate does not mask B12 deficiency and does not have a tolerable upper intake level (3). 

We hope this answers your questions.

(1). https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/folic-acid-for-the-prevention-of-neural-tube-defects-preventive-medication

(2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23193625/

(3) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23482308/