 Folate or folic acid deficiency can be especially severe in women of childbearing age and those are the patients that we worry about the most with folate deficiency. Because folate is needed for neural tube development in utero when the pregnant woman does not get enough folate in their diet, it can cause neural tube defects as the fetus develops and those might include symptoms such as cerebral palsy, spastic dysplasia or any kind of other neural tube defects. So it's very important to teach patients of childbearing age that they supplement with at least 400 micrograms of folate per day if they even think about becoming pregnant because many times pregnancies are not detected until the woman is already in their second trimester or towards the end of the first trimester and the neural tube develops very early during pregnancy. So that folate deficiency prevention is very very important in pregnant women and those that think about becoming pregnant. For full video on folic acid deficiency please go to youtube and check out my full video.