Boston,
Are you pregnant and sailing along doing fine? Let me ask you. Have you been checked for diabetes during your pregnancy? When diabetes occurs during pregnancy for the first time, it is called gestational diabetes. Pregnancy stresses the mother’s cells and chemistry in such a way that insulin resistance may develop and be manifest in the blood chemistry.
Women who develop gestational diabetes are at much higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes even if the blood chemistry return to normal after delivery. Therefore the window of opportunity for discovering if there is a problem with sugar metabolism is during the pregnancy and not afterward.
Why is this important? Not only are we in an epidemic of type 2 diabetes around the world, but the baby is at a higher risk for problems during labor and delivery if the blood sugar levels of the mother are high. One consequence of gestational diabetes is a big baby by size and weight. A large heavy baby puts increased stress on the mother at the time of delivery. The incidence of surgical delivery of the baby goes up as the size and weight of the baby increase above the norm. The same can be said for fetal distress during delivery.
If not treated, diabetes during pregnancy doubles the risk for the baby developing diabetes later in life.
Although gestational diabetes is not a secret, many pregnant women are not tested during the pregnancy. Studies show that about one-third of pregnant women were never tested for diabetes during their pregnancies. The incidence of gestational diabetes is currently 4% in the U.S. However, most researchers believe the incidence will climb higher and may even be higher now.
If a pregnant woman is pregnant for the first time and is otherwise healthy with no family history of diabetes, it is thought that a blood sugar test for diabetes should be performed after the 24th week of pregnancy. If the mother has other risk factors for diabetes, the blood test could be conducted earlier. These management details are best left to the one who is making the medical decisions during the pregnancy.
What kind of blood test? It is likely to be a fasting blood sugar test which tells the physician how the baby, mom and blood sugar are doing? Normal levels are well-established. The point that needs to be made is that an appropriate blood sugar test should be done during the pregnancy. Whether a test needs to be done after the delivery depends on the first test and risk factors. There is a new blood sugar test called the A1c hemoglobin test that is growing in popularity and may come into play in the diagnosis of gestational diabetes.
Why And When All Pregnant Women Should Be Tested For Gestational Diabetes
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