If you are planning to conceive or are pregnant, then you’d better get your blood sugar levels tested. According to a research conducted by Kaiser Permanente, a health care provider of California , it was found that the number of pregnant women who were diabetic prior to pregnancy has increased twofold in the last seven years.

Though the sample population was from Southern California, the results hold true for the pregnant population of the entire United States. This is a matter of great concern because it implies a lot of health complications for both the mother and the baby. The study was published in Diabetics Care, a journal of American Diabetes Association (the research funding body).

According to Dr. Florence Brown, co-director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center diabetes and pregnancy program, Boston, a diabetic woman who gets pregnant needs to work out her pregnancy plans before she gets pregnant. The consequences of pre-existent diabetes in pregnant women can be hazardous. Miscarriage, stillbirth and birth defects are amongst the major consequences.

From 1999 to 2005, the percentage of pregnant women with a history of pre-pregnancy diabetes increased from 0.8 to 0.18, the trend being more prominent in teenaged pregnant women in the age range of 13 to 19 years. In the last seven years, the percentage shift in pre-pregnancy diabetes in teenaged women was from a small 0.1 % to a significant 0.55 %. Black, Hispanic and Asian women were more pre-diabetic pregnancy prone than the whites.

Pre-pregnancy diabetes differs from Gestational diabetes (occuring in 3-8 percent of pregnant women in the US)that pregnant women experience as part of their pregnancy. This is more natural, caused as a result of some bodily imbalances that occur during pregnancy and disappears in course of time. There is nothing to be alarmed about Gestational diabetes unless it assumes severe dimensions.

The Kaiser study found that usually the pre-pregnancy diabetes was mostly of Type 2(in which inadequate production or wastage of insulin takes place unlike Type 1 where no insulin production takes place at all). The major causal factor is obesity. Hence it boils down to a flawed and obesity-prone lifestyle in today’s women as the main culprit of this medical condition. It is really saddening to know that even teenagers who are supposed to lead a very active and obesity-free lifestyle are the biggest victims of pre-pregnancy diabetes.

An active lifestyle, healthy and optimum quantity of food, physical exercise and blood sugar control with insulin are some of the methods suggested by Jean Lawrence a researcher from Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

According to Marie Frazzitta, program manager, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, New York( that conducts special health programs for diabetic pregnant mothers) a blood sugar check up and a medical examination in general, three months before planning pregnancy should be done, because by the time pregnancy is diagnosed, the fetal heart is already formed. The women who are diabetic are asked to control their blood sugar levels and increase their folic acid intake.

Via: Yahoo News