Questions And Answers About Diabetes During Pregnancy

The best way to understand diabetes during pregnancy is to first understand what non-pregnancy diabetes is.

What Is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by unusually high blood sugar, or glucose, levels and by erratic metabolic function. High blood sugar levels are caused either by low levels of the hormone insulin or by resistance to the effects of insulin, combined with insufficient levels of secreted insulin. Symptoms of diabetes sufferers include excessive urination, excessive thirst, increased fluid intake, and blurred vision.

Why Does Diabetes Occur During Pregnancy?

Every pregnant woman knows that hormones go crazy during pregnancy. The placenta, which nourishes the developing fetus in the womb, creates hormones that help the baby grow and develop.

Insulin is also a hormone, and the hormones created by the placenta can sometimes interfere with the pregnant woman's ability to use insulin. As the pregnancy progresses and the placenta increases its hormonal production, the pregnant woman's pancreas loses its ability to create insulin. As a result, glucose builds up in the bloodstream, and diabetes during pregnancy results.

Risk Factors

Pregnant women can assess risk factors to see if they are likely to get diabetes during pregnancy. Some of the risk factors are having a family history of diabetes, being overweight, having had a previous stillborn birth, having had a previous baby with a birth weight of greater than nine pounds, and being over 25 at the time of the birth. The African-American, Hispanic, and Native American races are all more likely to develop diabetes during pregnancy.

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Selected Diabetes Articles

Diabetes And Exercise: Perfect Together

Having diabetes doesn't mean you are bedridden for the rest of your life. On the contrary, regular exercise is a great way to manage your diabetes. And exercise has other health benefits such as help keep your circulation going, your heart strong and your energy levels up. You don’t have to become a triathlete in order to get benefits from regular exercise if you are diabetic. But you do need to have both your diabetes and exercise plans approved by your doctor. [Read full article]
 

All About Diabetes Education

With the Internet giving you access to billions of pages of information, it is no wonder that this is the place to go when trying to bring diabetes education into your life or the life of someone you care about. But it doesn't stop there, as must be a need for the information in order to get someone educated on the subject. More and more people must learn that one of the key factors in preventing and treating this illness is through diabetes education. There are so many people walking around with little or no knowledge on the subject matter and it is important for your nation and for our future for us to be more informed. [Read full article]
 

Reducing The Occurrence Of Diabetes in Children

The incidence of obesity in children has led some to describe childhood obesity as a crisis. Unfortunately, diabetes in children is consequence of the childhood obesity crisis. The incidence of diabetes in children has multiplied threefold during the last 30 years. [Read full article]