High blood sugar during pregnancy?

Glycemia is the amount of sugar in the blood and the deficiency of a hormone for your metabolism can cause devastating consequences, both for the mother and the fetus.

For this reason, it is important that blood glucose during pregnancy be monitored, as well as vigilance against the appearance of certain signs that threaten the course of pregnancy.

Diabetes in pregnancy

According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), they define it as a group of heterogeneous disorders, whose main characteristic is a state of hyperglycemia.

It is a heterogeneous disorder, because a specific cause is not yet known, but rather the intervention of multiple factors that can condition the disease.

Now, how do you know you have diabetes during pregnancy? There are two well-established concepts. The first is pre-gestational diabetes and the second is gestational diabetes.

Pre-gestational diabetes is all those women who have high blood glucose levels at the first prenatal check-up.

Usually, it is women who are diabetic, but did not know it or already knew it and have poor metabolic control.

On the contrary, gestational diabetes is an intolerance to carbohydrates, which is detected for the first time during pregnancy, especially after week 24.

Why is metabolic control important during pregnancy?

This is important for all the short-term and long-term complications that hyperglycemia causes in the mother and fetus.

Basically, the exposure of the fetus inside the womb causes the cells of the fetal pancreas to work forcibly producing more insulin.

At the same time, it generates a greater number of fat cells. So over time the child can suffer from obesity and insulin resistance.

In this sense, you are more likely to develop diabetes mellitus in the future. Also, the mother is at risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus.

However, in the short term the consequences for the fetus are intrauterine death, neonatal morbidities such as hypoglycemia, jaundice, among others.

Which are the risk factors?

All pregnant women in prenatal care should undergo a comprehensive and continuous evaluation, especially if they have any of the following risk factors.

• A maternal age greater than or equal to 35 years.

• History of previous children with a birth weight greater than or equal to 4 kg.

• First-degree relatives (dad, mom, or siblings) with diabetes.

• Asian or Latino ethnicity.

• Suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome.

• A body mass index in early pregnancy greater than or equal to 25.

General measures in the treatment of gestational diabetes

If your specialist determines that you do indeed have diabetes in pregnancy, it is essential that you follow some recommendations that will help you maintain stable maternal-fetal health.

• Exercise at least three times a week. It should be noted that physical activity should not be of high impact, since you could injure yourself.

• See a nutritionist to design a special diet for you.

• They learn to use the glucometer so that you can measure the blood glucose figures during the day.

• Don't miss out on weekly checkups with the obstetrician.

• You cannot smoke or drink alcohol.

These are some general recommendations, but you should consider getting a medical check-up every so often.