Taking vitamins during pregnancy can make your child more intelligent, new research suggests.
Supplements improved procedural memory, responsible for motor skills to the equivalent of an extra half year of education, a study found. While those born to anaemic mothers who had taken the iron tablets received a boost of a year's schooling.
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Other essential ingredients in the recipe for smarter kids include early life nurturing, happy mothers, and educated parents, scientists claim.
Researchers from Harvard, California and Lancaster universities assessed 3,000 children aged between nine and 12 born to mothers in a previous study. In the research conducted between 2001 and 2004, half had been given multiple micro-nutrient supplements.
Baby enjoying a reading book. PICTURE: Instagram
The tablets, which are similar those consumed by many during pregnancy, included folic acid, riboflavin, niacin and vitamins B12, C and D. While the others just received iron-folic acid supplements.
But the follow-up study, published in The Lancet Global Health, found 'impressive' long-term benefits to children born to mothers who were given MMNs. They had better procedural memory responsible for motor skills, equivalent to an increase of six months of schooling.
While children of anaemic mothers given MMNs scored substantially higher in their general IQ, comparable to that of a year of additional schooling.
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Study author Dr Elizabeth Prado, of the University of California, Davis, said 'the results were surprising'. 'The extent of our detailed cognitive assessments and the number of children tested, together with data from the pregnancy onward, that enabled us to clearly quantify the effects, and the results were surprising,' she added.
Co-author Dr Husni Muadz, of University of Mataram, said: 'No one had anticipated the extent to which social and environmental factors would exceed biological factors as determinants of cognitive function.'
Reading time. PICTURE: Instagram This comes after Finnish researchers discovered healthy diets can play a massive part in children's intelligence in September.
Youngsters who ate fruit, vegetables, fish and whole grains in their first three years of school performed better on tests. The findings, from the University of Eastern Finland, were independent of children's socio-economic status, physical fitness and body type.