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.