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Metabolism of Women during the Reproductive Cycle

VII. Utilization of Inorganic Elements (a Continuous Case Study of a Multipara)¹

Three Figures

Research Laboratory, Children's Fund of Michigan, Detroit

Using the continuous metabolic balance method of study on one woman in her fourth reproductive cycle when consuming a generous food intake the mean daily balances of calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine were found to be 0.37 ± 0.19, 0.11 ± 0.05, 0.56 ± 0.53, 1.40 ± 0.72, 0.26 ± 0.16, 0.34 ± 0.13 and 0.60 ± 0.96 gm., respectively, during the final 145 days of pregnancy and -0.48 ± 0.56, -0.03 ± 0.15, +0.47 ± 0.46, +0.87 ± 1.06, -0.37 ± 0.24, -0.22 ± 0.18, +0.39 ± 0.88 gm., respectively, from the tenth to fifty-third days of milk flow.

The twenty-eight acid-base balances during pregnancy showed a mean daily retention with standard deviation of 347 ± 246 cc. 0.1 N base. In lactation, because of losses of acid-forming elements, the base balance increased to 471 ± 423 cc. 0.1 N base per day.

The quantitative determination of the total accumulation of each individual element during the last half of pregnancy permitted a study of the comparative rates of gain of the elements and their relationships to one another with the advance of the reproductive cycle.

By the continuous observations there was no apparent change in the progressive gestatory needs as term approached.

On a maternal diet that was not only abundant in all the known nutritive essentials including minerals and vitamin D but in the proportions to be conducive to a high maternal storage the present woman was able to bear and breast feed an infant who showed no clinical or roentgenographic manifestations of rickets (Barnes, Cope, Hunscher and Macy, '34) although it never received any direct administration of vitamin D up to the eighth month of life other than that contained in its own mother's milk.

Providing a generous maternal reserve has been laid down in pregnancy over and beyond that necessary for fetal growth, the losses of the various elements that do occur in early lactation may have no apparent serious consequences as illustrated by this woman who has undergone frequent reproductive cycles during a period of 8 years.

Manuscript received 24 October 1935.