by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve seen the latest alarming study about pregnancy: “coffee causes miscarriages!” Well, that is not exactly what the study said, but that certainly is the message you would get if you only saw the popular media coverage.
According to the New York Times, of 264 women who said they consumed no caffeine, 12.5 percent had miscarriages, while of the 164 women who consumed 200 milligrams or more per day 24.5 percent had miscarriages. Got that? That’s where the “double the risk” headline comes in.
The press release for the study says, “The main message for pregnant women from these findings is that they probably should consider stopping caffeine consumption during pregnancy,” but news reports have advised pregnant women to cut it out entirely and immediately. One report I saw went so far as to tell women who are even thinking about become pregnant to give up caffeinated food (chocolate?!) and drinks.
More reasonable commentary is out there, but I wonder if anyone is hearing it. In the Times article cited above, Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an Obstetrics and Gynecology professor at Columbia University Medical Center noted that, “Moderation in all things is still an excellent rule. I think we tend to go overboard on saying expose your body to zero anything when pregnant.” Likewise, Dr. Tommaso Falcone, chair of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the Cleveland Clinic, noted in an interview with ABC News that 130 of the 172 miscarriages occurred in women who consumed either no or minimal amounts of caffeine. “[This means] that miscarriages can still occur and women should not feel that they caused it by having a cup of coffee.”
Interestingly enough, another study released this month showed no tie between caffeine and miscarriage, and surprise, surprise, it got much less coverage.
As most women of a certain age know, the sad fact is that miscarriage is incredibly common, and pregnant women instinctively want to figure out what they did “wrong” so they can keep it from happening again. But, when important medical studies are boiled down to their most simplistic conclusions, they do far more to fuel maternal guilt than advance maternal health, leading me to wonder what the real goal is in such alarmist reporting. I am hoping some of the voices of reason will be heard.
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