What Is Gestational Diabetes?
It occurs during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes, similar to the other forms of diabetes, tends to affect the way your cells use glucose, commonly known as sugar. The condition results in high blood pressure which can lead to complications and affect the health of mother and her unborn child.
Fortunately, gestational diabetes can be controlled by:
- Exercises.
- Consuming healthy foods or.
- Taking prescribed medications.
Managing blood sugar is important to prevent delivery complications. In majority instances of gestational diabetes, blood sugar normalizes after the baby is delivered. However, having the condition makes the mother more prone to develop type 2 diabetes in future. Women diagnosed with gestational diabetes are regularly monitored by their doctors whereas; the health care team takes measures to manage their blood sugar.
What Are The Symptoms Of Gestational Diabetes?
In most cases of gestational diabetes, women experience no apparent symptoms at all.
What Causes Gestational Diabetes?
Researchers have failed to understand why the condition develops in some pregnant women.
Normally, the food is digested by our body to make sugar, which enters our bloodstream. In return, our pancreas makes the hormone, insulin. (It helps sugar to transmit from the bloodstream into the cells of our body).
In pregnancy, the baby is connected to its mother’s blood supply through the placenta, a circular organ. The placenta makes increased levels of some different other hormones, nearly all of which affect the insulin action in the cells, as a result, increasing the blood sugar. While the baby grows day by day, placenta increases the production of hormones that acts to block insulin.
In gestational diabetes, the hormones produced by placenta tend to rouse an increase in the levels of blood sugar to an extent that can negatively impact the welfare and growth of the unborn baby. Often, gestational diabetes occurs during the second half of pregnancy.
What Are The Risk Factors Of Gestational Diabetes?
Few women are more prone to develop gestational diabetes, these are:
- Women over 25 years old.
- Women with a personal of family history of diabetes.
- Women who are overweight.
What Are The Complications Of Gestational Diabetes?
If gestational diabetes is not managed cautiously, it can end up in causing uncontrolled levels of blood sugar and complications for the mother and her unborn baby. Chiefly, it raises the chances of needing a C-section!
For the baby, gestational diabetes tends to increases the risks of following:
- Excessive birth weight.
- Low blood sugar.
- Premature birth.
- Respiratory distress syndrome.
- Type 2 diabetes (in future).
If gestational diabetes in left untreated, it can consequent in the death of the baby (Before being born or soon after the birth).
For the mother, gestational diabetes tends to increase the risks of the following:
- Preeclampsia.
- High blood pressure.
- Future diabetes.
How Is Gestational Diabetes Diagnosed?
During pregnancy, the healthcare team will conduct a routine screening for gestational diabetes which will include the following:
- Glucose challenge test.
- Glucose tolerance testing.
The results of the following will help detect gestational diabetes.
How Is Gestational Diabetes Treated?
Strategies to treat gestational diabetes can include:
- Regular monitoring of blood sugar.
- Healthy diet.
- Exercise.
- Medication.
- Close monitoring of baby.
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By : Natural Health News
