Pregnancy is a life-changing phenomenon, and you are going to carry a living, breathing human being inside your womb for the next nine months of your existence.
It is no less than a roller-coaster ride, especially for the female going through it.
However, just the imaginations and hope of getting to hold your little one, and caressing them, makes this whole challenge worthwhile.
But, despite all this, you need to be constantly aware that you must ensure that all the conditions are favourable for your unborn child; you need to make sure that everything favours the proper development and growth of your foetus.
You need to make sure that you intake a proper and balanced diet throughout your gestation period. Your body will need much more nourishment than before because it will be feeding two tummies instead of one.
But what’s most important is that you eat the kind of food that will enable your child’s growth and development instead of hindering it.
That is why it is usually recommended to eat as if you are eating for two humans to make sure enough calories are being consumed.
In pregnancy, whatever the women consume, the baby consumes first. That is why pregnancy requires you to increase your nutrition levels because the woman only gets whatever is left by the baby for her to the consumer.
Thus, you must ensure that you have all the healthy stuff in your body, if not for yourself, then for a healthy child.
Some mothers choose to consume drinking supplements because drinking is far less time consuming and easily digestible to fulfil their nutritional need, one of such popular drinking supplements in Ensure.
What is Ensure?
Introduce in the market in 1973; Ensure has maintained its record of providing its consumers with a complete and balanced nutritious drink.
It has remained the number one recommended brand among doctors who want their patients to consume nutritious oral products.
The brand has dedicated forty years to focus on the “science of nutrition.” Their well-formulated products took years of research before their manufacturing was done.
Leading scientists were taken on board, and numerous clinical studies were performed before they could be approved and brought to the market shelves.
The brand is undoubtedly held to high standards as far as the delivery of nutritious products is concerned. They are constantly working to develop more such products that can deliver improved quality to their consumers.
But the question here, under discussion, is that can pregnant women drink Ensure, or should they choose something else to consume besides it?
We have gathered all the pros and cons of consuming Ensure. There are many benefits to it, but also numerous side effects that cannot be overlooked ed. One must carefully know the two before they make any final decisions.
What are some benefits associated with the consumption of Ensure?
Why should you drink Ensure?
The biggest perk of Ensure is that it is equivalent to a full-fledged meal. If you are short on time and unable to have your breakfast, Ensure is your one true best friend.
It will hardly take you a minute to grab it and drink it when you are in a hurry.
Ensure also works as a snack, anytime, anywhere.
This drink, loaded with nutrients, has many health benefits for all men and women, but it has many more uses for pregnant women.
Why should you drink Ensure?
The most crucial element is that it gives you balanced nutrition to support your health and well-being.
Choosing to drink a healthy drink at the start of your day is the best choice one can make for their bodies, as it keeps you charged all day and saves you from many unnecessary cravings all day.
Ensure drinks contain all the essential proteins, vitamins, minerals, essential fats, and carbohydrates that promote health.
One cannot stress enough the fact that your baby depends solely on what you feed it. With that in mind, you need to be sure that you provide and nourish your little one properly.
From healthy development of organs to nerves to your baby’s cell bodies, Ensure ensures that all the nutrients are provided in an adequate amount.
Plus, it’s the best option for you when you are running late, even to grab a bowl of oatmeal of smoothie in the morning.
Moreover, Ensure is the most nutritious snack that you can ever opt for.
If you are always on the go and has little or no time to grab a bite and want something you can quickly chug, the best option is Ensure.
Every serving of Ensure will give you a whole ton of benefits.
For example, it contains milk protein concentrate, soy protein isolate, and whey protein concentrate.
All these constituents of Ensure are abundant sources of protein (the nutrient that is most important for cell division, that results in growth and development of cells), calcium (for strong and healthy bones), and B vitamins (responsible for cell metabolism).
Furthermore, it also contains canola oil, which is an excellent source of fats for your body.
The supplement is also filled with essential vitamins and minerals, so you are getting enough daily nutrients with every sip that you intake.
Ensure meets all your nutritional requirements throughout your gestation period:
A balanced and healthy diet, along with prenatal vitamins, are usually more than enough to meet the requirement of your daily nutritional intake.
For some women, that might be difficult to do, especially considering the increased number of women in the work industry who have a pretty hectic routine.
For instance, just by omitting certain foods from your diet, you will not be able to get the essential nutrients present in that particular kind of food.
For example, missing out on iron-rich food will result in iron deficiency, which, you will be surprised to know, is quite common during pregnancy.
A single dose of Ensure supplement has around twenty-five per cent of the iron that is needed daily.
If you drink Ensure twice, every day, with a vitamin, you will get the proper amount of iron that is needed every day. This is usually preferred during pregnancies instead of iron supplements, which can cause mild to severe constipation.
Use Ensure to meet your intake of calories, every single day:
An adult woman, who is not pregnant, is supposed to consume approximately 2000 calories every day to ensure healthy bodily functions.
However, according to doctors, when a woman is pregnant, the required number of calorie intake increases by 300.
Moreover, if you are pregnant with twins, your intake must increase twice that of mums with a single baby, I-e, by 600 calories per day.
The numbers mentioned above might not seem a lot, but it will seem like climbing a mountain if you are eating healthy.
For instance, a McCrispy from Mcdonald’s, which leans on an unhealthy side, is loaded with calories and will help you reach your goal much faster and in a much easier way.
However, here is the catch: these foods do not contain all the nutrients that you require. A regular salad, without any fancy dressing and sauces, will usually have approximately 400 calories.
This means that even if you eat all of it for lunch, you will still have to consume 1900 more calories to reach your goal.
To eat healthily yet reach your daily goal of appropriate calorie intake, you must snack all day long, from time to time, as this is not an option but a requirement.
Most women, however, are unable to do this because their daily routine does not allow them to snack all the time.
This is where Ensure enters to save the day. This guardian angel has 350 calories, which can help you to meet your daily calories requirement.
Using supplements with Ensure to tackle morning sickness:
Pregnancy might bring many blessings with it, but it also brings the curse of morning sickness.
It’s that time of the day when you feel like puking, and eating healthy is the last thing you can imagine when dining at all seems like a challenge.
This is precisely when most women cut back on the calories, as it is almost impossible to eat during this time.
If this is not a new description for you, consult your gynaecologist about taking supplements with Ensure or something similar to Ensure so that you can make sure that those proper nutritional requirements are being fulfilled, especially during the early months of pregnancy.
Is it safe for pregnant women to drink Ensure without fear of any risks?
Are you trying to gain some extra pounds during pregnancy?
Do you feel like your regular diet cannot give you enough calories and nutrients that are needed for your condition?
Increasing your daily calorie intake is an essential part of a pregnant woman’s everyday life.
The baby growing inside you solely depends on you for food and consumes what you eat. If your daily intake is healthy and nutrient-rich, then your baby will grow and develop healthily.
But if, for some reason, you are malnourished, there might be hindrances in the healthy growth and development of the foetus.
This is why it is a compulsion for all pregnant ladies to take care of what they eat and make sure they have a healthy and proper food intake.
A balanced diet includes; nuts, vegetables, protein-rich foods, and fruits; all these foods contain the essential nutrients that are mandatory for developing your little one.
You must have had heard before that some women drink certain supplements for the nourishment of their babies.
Other accessories are also used that are formulated to help you gain weight, especially if, by any chance, you started your pregnancy on the underweight side of the BMI scale.
Among many of those supplements, Ensure is a health drink that almost every adult can take.
It’s a brand of multiple supplement drinks that contain all the essential minerals, vitamins, and proteins.
One will be shocked to know that Ensure claims it contains over 25 minerals and vitamins in every single serving.
Ensure products can be taken as an alternative to smoothie and milkshakes.
Busy adults, especially moms, who had little or no time to prepare breakfast and then eat it, consider drinking supplements their ultimate friend.
Ensure is easy and quick to prepare the drink and works as a proper and healthy meal.
Taking Ensure supplements to gain weight during pregnancy period:
For some women, it might get tough to gain healthy pregnancy weight.
On the contrary, sometimes they can start to lose weight. Most of the time, weight gain and weight lose balance each other out.
However, losing too much weight can prove to be hazardous for the baby.
Sometimes, the mothers start to lose weight around the end of their pregnancy.
In this situation, it is advisable by the doctors to keep track of whatever you eat throughout the day to make sure that you are consuming enough nutrients every day.
It is sometimes usual to lose weight during pregnancy because eating habits change during it, and some women might start to eat more healthy than what they ate before they conceived.
Thus, if you lose a significant amount of weight during pregnancy, it might be a good and effective solution.
Side effects of drinking Ensure:
Nothing good comes without a tint of sour. That is precisely the case with Ensure as well.
Despite bringing many good things into your life and health, Ensure can also have specific side effects that need to be noted before buying your next pack of any Ensure pack.
Below are a few drawbacks and side effects associated with your consumption of Ensure products.
To what extent are the Ensure drinks safe?
Ideally, it would be best to consume whole foods to get proper nutrition.
Especially when you are pregnant, the conventional way is still the best way to get the required calories.
However, it is pretty challenging to manage every single thing in today’s world in 24 hours of the day due to busy and hectic routines if you are unsure whether you are receiving the required number of calories from your diet or not.
In this case, drinking Ensure products should not be a bad thing.
However, you need to make sure that which product is suitable for you and which one you are consuming?
What does that exactly mean?
Some types of Ensure have caffeine.
For example, an Ensure product goes by the name of “Ensure Max Protein” in Café Mocha flavour; one of its ingredients is caffeine.
Although a limited amount of caffeine brings more good than bad to your day, you must make sure that you are not consuming too much of it. Caffeine intake, daily, should not exceed 200 mg per day.
It’s important to know what Ensure you are drinking, especially if you want to cut back on caffeine.
Ensure serving contains 100mg of caffeine for every cup or eight ounces of coffee (a regular cup of coffee).
If you want to opt for this drink, make sure you don’t consume more than 2 cups a day. Usually, just one cup of coffee will not have enough caffeine to harm the baby by any chance; however, the less caffeine you consume, the better.
Pregnant women are discouraged from drinking more than one cup of coffee every day; thus, if you are pregnant, and want to opt for this type of Ensure, do not take more than one cup in a day.
Pregnant women who are too cautious and do not want to take any risks mostly cut back on caffeine altogether.
If you are such a woman, you should avoid Ensure Max. However, there is a myriad of other options to choose from.
Regular Ensure does not contain caffeine at all. Most of the other Ensure drinks also contain little or no caffeine at all.
Thus, if you are careful with your Ensure consumption, you should not be facing any problem associated with it. But it is not advisable to solely rely on these supplement drinks to fulfil your nutritional demands.
You must also nourish your body with authentic and whole foods. It would be best to increase the intake of fresh food products and always stay hydrated with water and fresh fruit juices.
Do not use Ensure as part of your diet plan, during pregnancy:
Even though Ensure can be used as an alternative to the meals you missed in a day due to your busy schedule or being sick (feeling nauseous), it should not be used as part of your diet plan during pregnancy.
The last thing anybody would recommend you during pregnancy is going on a diet since it’s not safe. Dieting can cause a significant number of calories to be cut out every day, which is quite dangerous for the woman and her baby.
Instead, ignore your weighing scale for a few months, and eat your heart out. You will have plenty of time to lose all the extra pounds after you have your baby delivered.
A few things to keep in mind:
It can be said without any doubt that no matter which Ensure drink you choose for yourself, it is going to be loaded with nutrients.
However, when you are pregnant, you need to place special considerations on everything and ensure that supplements should not be an exception.
Just like any diet and supplement you want to put inside your body, proper caution and considerations must be done.
You must not forget that what goes inside your tummy also goes inside your baby’s tummy. No matter what the food is, there are always effects and side effects to consider.
Make it a habit, for the next nine months, to consult your gynaecologist or dietitian before consuming anything daily, including Ensure.
Unarguably, it is an easy and convenient supplement, but making sure it is the right choice for you, is essential.
You should also consult professionals if you are not experiencing your desired results from the drink. May you want to gain a little mass, or maybe you feel too tired all the time and want more energy.
You chose to Ensure with the hope to tackle these problems, yet you feel no difference and no outcome. In this situation, your doctor might recommend some different drinking supplement to you.
There might be a chance where you will have to follow a different diet plan, which is more suitable for your condition. Maybe another supplement drink will be prescribed to you.
No matter what the case is, be sure to consult the professionals before deciding to take any drinking product.
In this way, you will ensure that maximum benefits and minimum risks are associated with your child’s health and yourself. As a healthy mom, she makes a healthy baby.
Final Verdict: Can you drink Ensure during pregnancy?
You can, without a doubt, drink Ensure products during pregnancy. However, you must check with your doctor before buying it and having it daily.
Secondly, it is preferable to choose Ensure products free from caffeine so that you remain at the epitome of your health throughout your gestation period.
Remember to eat and stay healthy and happy and enjoy the process.
Have we missed something?
Share your experiences how Ensure would be best for pregnancy woman and what would be the right process?
FAQs
These frequently asked questions are found so common in the mass of people so we tried to provide all the answers in a single line.
Stay connected for more FAQs.
Is it ok to drink ensure when pregnant?
Yes it is ok to drink Ensure, and these kind my product can be consume by pregnant women to fulfill their nutrition; but if you have plan to take more serving time a day you should seek a medical advice from doctors.
How many ensures can I drink a day while pregnant?
Ensure provide complete nutrition and that can be intake daily. However, Individual needs depends upon their age, gender, physical activity and their health status and pregnancy is one of them, so consult with health professionals or your doctor before start taking regarding your health.
