Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes that non-diabetic women are often diagnosed with when they are pregnant. In a recent study taken in the United States, the results showed that at least 3 in every 100 pregnant women discover that they are suffering from this disorder. Diabetes is now a very common disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin or fail to produce insulin properly.
This form of diabetes is not very serious for health because it usually begins a couple of weeks into the pregnancy and vanishes after the baby is born. An expectant woman tends to produce sufficient amount of insulin, however pregnant women, who are suffering from this temporary disorder, develop a partial blockage in their insulin triggered by other hormones produced during pregnancy. This is called insulin resistance. Another reason that may lead to this disorder is weight gain which obviously pregnant women experience a lot.
There are various factors involved which trigger diabetes during pregnancy. Most frequent candidates for this type of disorder are overweight women and those who are 25 years old and above are more at risk of having this diabetes. There are two types of women who develop this disease during their pregnancy, first, those women who have a family history of diabetes and secondly those who had to get their pregnancies terminated due to unexplained miscarriage or stillbirth. A few other factors include previously delivering a large baby, having high blood pressure and being diagnosed with diabetes while pregnant before.
The symptoms of Gestational diabetes are often mild and may not even be visible. However there are women who experience a few or all of these things, blurry vision, frequent thirst and urination, laziness, weight loss and vaginal infections. It is better to get pregnant women tested for gestational diabetes even though they don’t show any signs of having the symptoms because it can cause complication such as hypertension in the mother, difficulty in delivery due to a large baby, and breathing problems in the child. It is better to be prepared, rather than finding out when it’s too late.
Diagnosis of diabetes of this sort is usually done through a glucose tolerance test. This specific examination should be taken during the 24th to the 28th week of pregnancy. For pregnant women who have a family history of women suffering from this disease and are of high risk, their gynecologist may perform this specific test as early as third month of the pregnancy.
While taking the tolerance test the expectant mother- to- be has to drink a glucose solution. After an hour, a sample of her blood is taken to check for the glucose level. When the reading is a glucose level of no more than 140 mg/dl, the patient is considered not to have diabetes.
One way of preventing gestational diabetes taking place in a pregnancy is to maintain ideal weight once falling pregnant, or while planning the pregnancy. For those with high risk factors, early and regular check-up normally help them maintain their general health during pregnancy.
|
