What is Gestational Diabetes?

The diabetes of pregnant women

Gestational diabetes is one of the complications that may occur during pregnancy. It affects the blood sugar in your body like every other form of diabetes. The result of this is a high level of blood sugar. The gestational diabetes can cause you and the baby a lot of health problems. The gestational diabetes symptoms are increased urination and excessive thirst.
Every woman who is pregnant can develop gestational diabetes but there are several groups of women which are at greater risk. There are a few factors that might increase the risk of developing this type of diabetes. First is the age- at higher risk are women who are more than twenty five years old. After that very relevant is the personal and family history -

you are at higher risk if you had gestational diabetes in the pregnancy before or if you have a close relative with diabetes type 2. Another factor is the weight- you are at higher risk for gestational diabetes, if before the pregnancy you were overweight. You should know that the race is also important for gestational diabetes- women of some races (Hispanic, American Indian and black women) are more likely to develop this type of diabetes but the reason is uncertain. If you had some complications during your previous pregnancy, like baby who weighed more than 4 kilos or unexplained stillbirth, it might lead in your next pregnancy to gestational diabetes.
Of course, as in any case, also here you can find women who didn’t have any of the known risk factors but they still develop gestational diabetes.
You can usually control your blood sugar with exercises and a certain diet. If this doesn’t help, you might ask your doctor to give you some medication. Very essential to your treatment is to monitor your blood sugar and check if it is in the normal range.

The Unknown Cause of Gestational Diabetes Revealed

The unknown cause of gestational diabetes

One of the most common complications during pregnancy is the gestational diabetes. It occurs during some women pregnancies even if there are no related symptoms or previous history of diabetes. This condition appears in about 2-5% of the pregnancies. Doctors can’t define the accurate cause of it. Many experts believe that gestational diabetes occurs because of the fact that the glucose metabolism is interfered by the placental hormones. The placenta produces the so called pregnancy hormones. Some of them, like estrogen, cortisol and placental lactogen block the activity of insulin. This is known as counter insulin effect. It appears usually at 20-24 weeks of pregnancy. The symptoms of this kind of diabetes appear in pregnant women who have family history of this diabetes or pregnant women who are overweight. Of course, there are some more factors involved. During pregnancy women put on some weight, they are not physically active as they were before etc.

It is very interesting that the symptoms of diabetes during the pregnancy are very similar with the ones in the other types of diabetes. These symptoms are: extreme hunger, unclear vision, regularly urinating, unquenchable thirst and ketoacidosis.

Nowadays to eat balanced diet food (with the right amount of carbohydrates, fats, etc. and rich of proteins) is the only working method that prevents gestational diabetes. A diet is accepted as effective when it provides the necessary calories and energy required for the correct development and growth of the baby and the mother and it doesn’t increase the glucose levels.

Each pregnant women should be very careful, because she is responsible not only for herself but for the fetus inside her either. For that reason they should go regularly to a doctor and if they think that they might have gestational diabetes, they should go and run some tests after 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy. 

The placenta- cause for gestational diabetes

Some pregnant women suffer from higher glucose levels. This is a condition called gestational diabetes. The exact cause of this form of diabetes is unknown but there are many specialists who think that this is connected to the stress on the woman's body during pregnancy. Most of the women don’t know that they have this condition and they didn’t notice any symptoms.

The main cause for gestational diabetes is the placenta and how it works. In the uterus the placenta is the life support for the baby. It produces different hormones during the pregnancy. Many of these hormones affect the mother insulin negatively. This leads to high levels of blood sugar- the insulin can’t stir the glucose into the cells and out of the blood. In order to manage the placental hormones effects, the mother produces her usual amount of insulin maximum three times (insulin resistance).
The classical symptoms for diabetics are: extreme hunger, frequent urination, unusual weight loss, irritability, increased fatigue, blurry vision and excessive thirst. A few pregnant women have these symptoms but for most of them the symptoms of gestational diabetes are hidden. For that reason it is very important pregnant women to be tested for gestational diabetes a little bit before the end of the second trimester (24-28 weeks).

During the oral glucose tolerance test, the pregnant woman will drink a solution that contains fifty grams of glucose. Further testing is needed, if her level of blood glucose after an hour is greater or equal to 130 to 140 mg/dl.

After that there is a test that can help determine the gestational diabetes. This is a 3 days test. The woman eats diet food (150g of carbohydrates minimum) and the night before the test she needs to fast. The next morning she has to drink an oral glucose solution (100g). At four different intervals the doctor tests her plasma glucose.

Gestational Diabetes Symptoms

Gestational Diabetes Symptoms

You have to locate the symptoms of a certain disease in order to recognize the disease itself. The symptoms of gestational diabetes are like the symptoms of diabetes type 2. Some of these symptoms are: fatigue, irritability, excessive hunger, weight loss, increased thirst and frequent urination. There are also some additional symptoms that can appear if the illness is left untreated or unnoticed - blurred vision and abnormal weight loss.

Pregnancy is part of women’s life and it is considered as most life-threatening and sensitive stage because during that time there might be a lot of complications. One of these complications is quite known. In the last phases of pregnancy a condition called gestational diabetes (GDM) might appear. It is very essential for the mother and the baby to find a way to control this metabolic disorder. If no measures are taken, there might be fatal consequences. So, in order this not to happen, pregnant women should find a working solution to that problem as soon as they find out about it.

If you consider all that, you can understand the importance of gestational diabetes diet. In that way you can control the gestational diabetes symptoms. For safety reasons, before you start this diet you need to make some research and find out more about it. You must consult with your doctor and take in mind his recommendations. There are a lot of women that started this diet during their pregnancy and they all felt relief.

The most important part is to think for the health of the mother and the baby. They are connected and the children even from that early stage are dependent on their mothers. So, if you are pregnant, you should consider many things in order to keep safe yourself and your baby. In the end, this is the most important thing.