Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes is a kind of diabetes that affects pregnant women. Most of women have no recognizable symptoms. Most of women believe that the hormones developed during pregnancy decrease a woman’s accessibility toward insulin. This further adds to high level of blood sugar in the body. Gestational diabetes affects around 4% of all pregnant women and that could be potentially harmful to the unborn child.

The usual estimation shows that 135,000 gestational diabetes cases arise in the USA every year. Generally, gestational diabetes starts in the 5th or 6th month of pregnancy (between 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy). Most often, it vanishes after the delivery.

However, women who have hereditary disease of diabetes are more vulnerable to develop gestational diabetes problem at the time of pregnancy. In addition, it may have an effect on pregnant women above 25 years and are fat. It is still an unknown fact that why gestational diabetes develops more often to pregnant women of Africa, Asia, America, and Native American background.

Women who are already fat and are pregnant will find hard to evade developing gestational diabetes. This is also applicable to women, who avoid regular exercise and who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol often. Hence, it is advisable for pregnant women to eat healthy diet, and quit smoking and alcohol during pregnancy. By doing this, you can greatly reduce the chances to develop gestational diabetes. You can find valuable information to reduce the stress and danger that can often accompany gestational diabetes here.

Complications:

High level of sugar is unhealthy for you as well as your unborn baby. If gestational diabetes is left untreated, your baby could be vulnerable to many problems at birth. For instance, your newborn might have a low sugar level or weigh much heavier than the normal.

Gestational diabetes can affect your health conditions as well. For example, if your newborn is very heavy, you may find it difficult to deliver or may undergo cesarean operation.

Gestational diabetes is a severe condition, which causes numerous complications. For example, it increases the chance of high blood pressure or preemclampsia that is danger for both mother as well as newborn.

In addition, gestational diabetes puts the infant at risk to develop jaundice, diabetes, and rigorous breathing problems. If left untreated and undetected, gestational diabetes could lead the infant to develop macrosomia. This means, the infant is very heavy for normal delivery, thus making it more complicated for the mother to suffer from severe injuries, while delivering.