Feb 24 2009
Facts About Gestational Diabetes
Diabetes is a condition that affects your body’s ability to produce insulin and effectively manage it’s blood glocose levels. There are two different or main types of diabetes, these are Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. A third and less serious kind of diabetes, gestational diabetes, is exclusively experienced by pregnant women. This condition occurs due to circumstances that are brought about by the woman’s pregnancy but does not necessarily affect all pregnant women.
Gestational diabetes is a more common occurrence for women who are prone to diabetes even before they get pregnant. The pregnancy manages to trigger factors that will eventually lead to gestational diabetes if the woman is not careful in monitoring her health. Women who have diabetes even before they get pregnant are different from those who develop gestational diabetes when they get pregnant.
Cause Of Gestational Diabetes
There is actually no clear cause of gestational diabetes. Many doctors and researchers believe that gestational diabetes may be triggered by the many hormones and chemical changes that occur to a woman’s body during pregnancy. These changes often occur in the way that the body processes and uses the sugar that it gets from the food people ingests. A gestational diabetes diet may be recommended by the woman’s obstetrician-gynecologist if she develops diabetes during pregnancy. This kind of diet will help the pregnant woman manage and control her diabetes. Most cases of this type of diabetes resolve itself when the woman gives birth.
How Gestational Diabetes Affects Mother And Child
Gestational diabetes can be dangerous for both mother and child when left untreated or unnoticed. This is the reason why doctors for pregnant women have blood tests done to monitor the blood sugar levels in a pregnant woman. The problems that this type of diabetes brings often occur at birth and after. Most likely, pregnant women with unmanaged diabetes will have babies who weight more than what is safe to deliver, babies with jaundice or babies who they themselves have low blood sugar levels.
Another threat that is brought about by gestational diabetes is preeclampsia. This is a condition that threatens both mother and child during child birth. Preeclampsia prevents the right amount of food and air from being delivered to the baby. The placenta is compromised with this condition and the risk of having low birth weight babies and babies with some conditions are high.
Gestational diabetes is a manageable condition that usually disappears when the baby is delivered and hormones are back to normal.