What happens if you drink water during a glucose tolerance test?

Glucose tolerance testing refers to a blood test for women during pregnancy to see if there is a risk of gestational diabetes. Because once diabetes occurs during pregnancy, it is necessary to strictly control diet and perform appropriate daily activities throughout the pregnancy. Glucose tolerance testing is a guarantee of one's physical condition during and after pregnancy. So what happens if you drink water during the glucose tolerance test? Will it affect the inspection results? Pregnant women must be aware of this problem.

The oral glucose tolerance test is the gold standard for diagnosing diabetes and hyperglycemia in pregnant women. Therefore, when doing the oral glucose tolerance test, it is recommended not to drink water in the middle. If drinking water will affect the blood sugar level, the result will be slightly lower. Therefore, it is best to do a red grape glucose tolerance test orally, and avoid drinking water during the process.

But if you drink it by mistake, if the amount of water is not large, it should not have a significant impact on blood sugar levels. As a diagnostic criterion, the blood sugar levels at zero minutes and two hours are the intersection of these diagnostic criteria. If your water ingestion time affects these two time points, please consider the results of this oral grape glucose tolerance test.

Common Problems with Glucose Tolerance

1. Eat normally 3 days before the experiment and no dietary restrictions are required. Three days before the experiment, the dietary carbohydrate intake (i.e. rice and pasta) should not be less than 150 grams. If the experimenters intentionally reduce the amount of regular meals, the test results will be inaccurate, resulting in an incorrect diagnosis.

2. Exercise as much as possible, avoid over-exercise, and maintain a stable mood: Exercise as much as possible 3 days before the experiment, avoid excessive exercise. However, excessive exercise before the experiment can excite the central nervous system and increase blood sugar.

3. Be sure to fast: When doing a glucose tolerance test, pregnant mothers must fast for 8 to 14 hours to truly reflect their blood sugar levels. For example, if you are doing a grape glucose tolerance test at 8 o'clock in the morning, it is best not to eat after 10 o'clock the night before. You can drink water, but not tea or coffee.

4. No eating during the experiment: No smoking, eating or drinking during the experiment. You can walk a little, but avoid excessive exercise. Also, pregnant mothers do not need to be anxious or have emotional fluctuations due to repeated blood draws.

5. Special circumstances: If symptoms such as pale complexion, nausea, vomiting, or fainting occur during the inspection period, the experiment must be terminated. If the above symptoms occur 3-4 hours after taking sugar, it should be considered as reactive hypoglycemia. Blood should be drawn immediately to measure blood sugar and the patient should be allowed to eat.

In daily life, many pregnant mothers confuse the glucose tolerance test with Down syndrome screening. Here I would like to seriously remind everyone that these are two completely unrelated things. If you don't want to do a glucose tolerance test during pregnancy, I would like to tell you here that you must do Down syndrome screening. It is a kind of protection for your child and your family.