Are prenatal vitamins hurting you?

Prenatal vitamins provide critical nutrients your body needs before pregnancy, but women taking them before planning for a baby may be at risk for undetected health problems.

Many women have come to believe that taking prenatal vitamins, while planning to get pregnant or not, will help grow beautiful hair, nails and more of what your body must need. But that's not exactly accurate.

"It's a little bit of a misconception, it may not make that much of a difference," Kelsey-Seybold obstetrician Dr. Deepali Patni said.

In fact, when you consider too much of some vitamins, there can be harmful side effects. Take Vitamin A for example, which tends to be higher in prenatal vitamins, taking too much of this in extreme cases could lead to liver damage.

"So the fat soluble vitamins such as Vitamin A, you don't want to take too much of so prenatal vitamins or any other vitamin supplement actually kind of want to look at how much of each vitamin is in each one," Patni said.

Another risk of taking prenatal vitamins is that they can mask a B-12 deficiency.

According to the National Institutes of Health, folic acid can hide symptoms of a type of anemia that leads to neurological disorders, which means people who don't know they have it, and consume too much folic acid, might not get a diagnosis before symptoms progress. That could allow the disease to cause neurological damage without treatment.

Patni said if you do not have a specific illness, there is no harm in taking prenatal vitamins. It would just be harmful if you don't know that you have that illness.

Doctors recommend women of child-bearing age to consider the possibility of getting pregnant when choosing vitamins.

“If you're reproductive age woman and you're not on birth control, I would recommend taking prenatal vitamins. If you're on regular birth control, you can take just regular vitamins," Patni said.

She said she looks for calcium and iron in women's vitamins, which tend to be higher in regular vitamins.

If you are trying to conceive, Patni said to aim for at least 400 micrograms of folic acid.

Always talk to your doctor before starting any regimen of drugs or vitamins.