Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes is a condition that may occur during pregnancy periods in those who don’t yet have diabetes. Two to ten percent of pregnancies each year in the US develop this disease. Only through managing gestational diabetes can you ensure that the pregnancy is healthy. Typically, the disorder develops when the body fails to produce enough insulin during pregnancy. As a result, it’s relatively common for the body to go through changes like weight gain and generate more hormones during this time.
These changes may cause the cells of the body to utilize insulin less effectively, which is insulin resistance, a condition we’ve mentioned previously. In other words, it increases the body’s need for more insulin. Most—if not all women—have insulin resistance at one level or another, especially in late pregnancy. But it’s not uncommon for them to have it before pregnancy too, and what happens is that the high need of their bodies for insulin leads to gestational diabetes.
Symptoms and risk factors are practically non-existent for gestational diabetes. So to know whether or not you have the condition, the best thing to do is get tested for it.
