What Is The Best Diet For Gestational Diabetes?

What is the best diet for gestational diabetes?

Gestational diabetes can cause a range of complications during pregnancy. Fortunately, a woman can help reduce complications by following a healthful diet. What foods should women eat and what foods should they avoid if they have gestational diabetes?
Gestational diabetes occurs if a woman's body cannot produce enough insulin, during her pregnancy. This deficiency leads to high blood sugar. High blood sugar levels may cause problems for the woman and her baby if not managed properly.
This article explains what type of diet a woman should follow during pregnancy if she has gestational diabetes. It also considers other treatment options for gestational diabetes and what complications may occur if the condition is not properly managed.
Contents of this article:
Understanding gestational diabetes
Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that can develop during pregnancy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2 and 10 percent of pregnancies are affected by gestational diabetes each year in the United States.
This type of diabetes occurs when a woman's body cannot make enough of the hormone insulin. Insulin is made by the pancreas and helps the body's cells to use sugar from the blood as energy.
When a woman is pregnant, her body will produce more hormones, and she may put on weight. Both of these changes may mean that her body's cells may not use insulin as well as they used to. This is called insulin resistance.
Becoming resistant to insulin means that the body needs more of it in order to use up the sugar in the blood. Sometimes a woman's Continue reading

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Symptoms of EARLY diabetes: Five risk factors putting YOU on course for type 2 diabetes

Prediabetes is also referred to by medics as borderline diabetes, is a metabolic condition.
If undiagnosed or untreated, prediabetes can develop into type 2 diabetes; which is treatable but not easily reversed.
Experts said it is a ‘critical stage’ in the development of diabetes because lifestyle choices - such as changing diet and exercising - can return blood sugar levels to normal.
It is therefore crucial to recognise it as early as possible, medics argue.
The condition is considered to be a grey area between having normal blood sugar levels and those verging on diabetic levels.
Diabetes.co.uk states : “Prediabetes is characterised by the presence of blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be classed as diabetes.
“Prediabetes may be referred to as impaired fasting glucose (IFT), if you have higher than normal sugar levels after a period of fasting, or as impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), if you have higher than normal sugar levels following eating.
“Each year in the UK, 5 to 10 per cent of people diagnosed with prediabetes go on to develop type 2 diabetes.”
There are no clear symptoms of prediabetes, so people could be suffering with the condition without knowing it.
However people with prediabetes might be suffering with similar symptoms to type 2 diabetes.
These include urinating more frequently, feeling thirsty and feeling tired.
Symptoms can also include itching around the penis or vagina as a result of thrush, cuts or wounds which heal slowly and blurred vision.
Being overweight can also cause type 2 diabetes.
Fri, Aug Continue reading

The how, what, and why of exercise and type-2 diabetes

Diabetes is a common problem among the American population and worldwide. Aside from the impacted life span and quality of life, diabetes is associated with an increased burden on society in relation to medical costs which has a great economic impact. The most influential factors that have been found to be related to diabetes include genetic factors and environmental influences. While you may not be able to change your genetics you can make a change on environmental risk factors.
Risk factors
Obesity and inactivity are two of the main risk factors of acquiring diabetes. Environmental factors may be mostly modifiable which means that many people that acquire diabetes may have been able to avoid this condition and may also be able to reverse this condition with lifestyle changes. Diet is a crucial aspect of the overall management of diabetes as well as exercise and physical activity.
Type 1 versus Type 2
Type 2-diabetes can be difficult to treat and can be expensive to manage and that is why avoiding this diagnosis is imperative. Diabetes occurs because the body does not produce or does not properly use insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is produced by the pancreases that allows glucose or sugar to enter the cells. If the pancreas is unable to produce enough insulin or when muscle, fat, and liver cells do not properly respond to the insulin that is there then glucose builds up in the blood which can become toxic. Hyperglycemia is a condition that occurs when there is too much glucose in the blood. Type 1-diabetes is not related to diet and inactivity but is the type of diabet Continue reading

Why global warming could lead to a rise of 100,000 diabetes cases a year in the U.S.

If the average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius, sea levels will rise, crop yields will fall and vulnerable species will see their habitat shrink or disappear.
Experts have previously predicted that climate change could fuel the spread of conditions such as malaria and dengue fever, because rising temperatures will broaden the range of disease-spreading mosquitoes. Likewise, as extreme weather becomes more of the norm, so will cholera and other water-borne illnesses.
But diabetes is different. It doesn't spread like an infectious disease. People develop type 2 diabetes when their extra pounds and sedentary lifestyle make their bodies less sensitive to insulin. That, in turn, causes their blood sugar to rise and can eventually lead to heart disease, nerve damage, kidney problems and other serious health issues.
A 2015 study of eight adults with Type 2 diabetes found that after spending 10 days in moderately cold weather, their metabolisms improved and they became more sensitive to insulin, reversing a key symptom of the disease.
Comparing the two, they found that the higher the average temperature in a particular time and place, the higher the age-adjusted incidence of diabetes. Overall, as the average annual temperature rose by 1 degree Celsius (or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the number of diabetes cases rose by 3.1 per 10,000 people.
Obesity is a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, and the researchers also found that each 1-degree Celsius temperature increase was associated with a 0.173% increase in the prevalence of obesity.
Even when the researchers adjusted for the preva Continue reading

Can diabetic neuropathy be reversed?

Diabetic neuropathy refers to nerve damage caused by diabetes.
Neuropathy is a common condition impacting 60 to 70 percent of adults with diabetes. However, it mainly concerns those with uncontrolled blood sugar levels or those who have had diabetes for more than 25 years.
The nerve damage caused by diabetic neuropathy is irreversible but there are ways to lessen symptoms and prevent further harm.
Contents of this article:
What is diabetic neuropathy?
Diabetic neuropathy is a family of progressive nerve disorders related to type 1 and 2 diabetes.
Although research is still taking place on this type of nerve damage, doctors think that blood sugars may damage nerve cells by impairing nerve fibers and reducing or confusing signaling.
However, nerve damage is likely to be caused by a combination of factors, such as how the immune system functions, genetics, smoking, or alcohol use.
Neuropathy can cause a range of symptoms, including pain, loss of sensation, numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness.
Although neuropathy can occur wherever there are nerves, it tends to affect the legs and feet.
Those with diabetic neuropathy tend to:
have poor blood sugar control
be over the age of 40
be overweight or obese
have had diabetes for at least 10 to 25 years, depending on the severity
Types
Diabetic neuropathy is typically divided into four categories depending on which nerves are affected.
Peripheral neuropathy
Nerve damage that impacts the ability of the peripheral nerves to sense things, such as temperature and touch.
Peripheral neuropathy most commonly affects the arms, hands, legs, Continue reading