What to Expect: Eating Well When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff

Author:Heidi Murkoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2005-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

Gestational Diabetes

IF YOU’VE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH gestational diabetes, you’re not alone. Between 3 and 5 percent of pregnant women develop this condition, which occurs when the body can’t regulate blood sugar levels. Call it a glitch in Nature’s otherwise ingenious system. Normally, the pancreas makes a hormone called insulin, which allows cells to turn glucose, or sugar, into usable fuel. During pregnancy, as increasing hormone levels make the body more resistant to insulin, the body is challenged to produce extra insulin in order to keep blood sugar in check. When the body doesn’t meet the challenge, ges-tational diabetes results.

Unlike other types of diabetes, gestational diabetes is temporary—blood-sugar levels generally return to normal after delivery. Like other types of diabetes, it’s best controlled by carefully following a proper diet. (Though there are also many nondietary changes to make if you have gesta-tional diabetes, such as getting regular exercise; see What to Expect When You’re Expecting.) To keep your blood sugar under control, you’ll need to consider the following factors:

Diet changes. It’s likely that your doctor will instruct you to follow the nutrition guidelines set by the American Diabetes Association, which emphasize a good balance of healthy carbohydrates, fats, and protein in the right amounts (and which you’ll find doesn’t differ all that much from The Pregnancy Diet). But those guidelines are just general; to be most successful, your diet should be individually tailored for you based on your blood-glucose level, weight, exercise habits, and food preferences. Ask your practitioner to recommend a registered dietician who has experience in gestational diabetes, contact your hospital for a referral, or speak to someone from your local chapter of the American Dietetic Association or the American Diabetes Association.

The typical recommendations encourage women with gestation diabetes to do the following:

• Shun sugar. What goes for most pregnant women goes more emphatically for you. To keep your blood-sugar levels from escalating, you’ll need to stay away from foods that increase them. Not surprisingly, simple sugars (including sugar, honey, brown sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, turbinado sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and molasses) top that list. When scanning labels for sugar, keep in mind that ingredients that end in ose are always sugar (sucrose, dextrose, glucose). You can eat foods that contain a small amount of sugar in moderation, but try to steer clear of high-sugar standards, such as pies, cakes, cookies, ice cream, candy, and soft drinks. Sucralose (Splenda) makes a good sugar substitute.

• Forgo fruit juices. Even fruit sugar can raise your blood sugar, which means that naturally sweet 100 percent fruit juices will have to be limited, too. Your dietician or doctor may give you the go-ahead on occasional small amounts of juice (up to six ounces, taken with meals); mixing the juice with sparkling water will dilute the fruit sugar, while making your treat last longer. Tomato juice (which is technically a fruit juice) is a good choice because of its low-sugar content. Fresh fruit isn’t a problem, since (unlike juice) it contains fiber, which slows the absorption of sugar into the blood (see below).

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