What is high blood sugar during pregnancy?

As life is getting more tiring and more fulfilling nowadays, many pregnant women will face gestational hyperglycemia. If gestational hyperglycemia is not well controlled, it will seriously affect the health of the pregnant woman and the fetus. In severe cases, it may even lead to the death of the pregnant woman due to dystocia or heavy bleeding. Therefore, when a pregnant woman has gestational hyperglycemia, she must control the blood sugar level in time. So what is gestational hyperglycemia?

1. What is high blood sugar during pregnancy?

Gestational hyperglycemia refers to diabetes or varying degrees of impaired glucose tolerance that occurs during pregnancy, that is, pregnancy comes first and diabetes occurs later. Most cases are diagnosed during the 24th to 28th week of pregnancy. After delivery, most patients' blood sugar levels will return to normal and their diabetes symptoms will disappear. About 20% of patients develop type 2 diabetes years or decades after delivery.

2. Causes of high gestational sugar

After a woman becomes pregnant, the secretion of sex hormones increases, which have the effect of resisting insulin in the periphery of human tissues. As the gestational age increases, the increasing levels of estrogen and progesterone prompt the body to secrete more insulin to maintain normal sugar metabolism. Due to individual differences, not everyone's pancreas has such a good compensatory ability. For those whose compensatory ability is not so good, they may show abnormal glucose metabolism or insufficient insulin sensitivity. These are the causes of gestational diabetes.

3. Inspection Methods

The screening method is to have the pregnant woman drink 50gm of sugar water, and then draw blood for a blood sugar test one hour after drinking. If the blood sugar level is greater than 140mg/dL, gestational diabetes is suspected, but the diagnosis cannot be confirmed. You must further do the so-called 100gm glucose tolerance test, which involves drawing blood once when fasting, then drinking 100gm of sugar water, and then drawing blood once each after one, two, and three hours to test your blood sugar level (you can clearly understand why you don’t use 100gm for screening diagnosis at the beginning, because if you draw blood once with 50gm, you can rule out the possibility, and you don’t have to be pricked with so many needles.

4. Mitigation methods

Whether the pregnant woman has high blood sugar or has been diagnosed with diabetes, the first thing to do is to adjust and control the diet. The purpose is to control the increase in blood sugar in pregnant women while ensuring the normal development of the fetus. Pure sugar products such as honey, syrup, maltose and desserts with high sugar content are strictly limited. Try to choose cereal staples with a lower glycemic index, such as oatmeal, cornmeal, and buckwheat noodles. When a pregnant woman suffers from diabetes, the protein decomposition increases exponentially, so the protein intake should be increased. She should eat more high-quality protein foods such as fish, meat, poultry milk and beans.

The above is the information about hyperglycemia during pregnancy. I hope it can help expectant mothers who suffer from hyperglycemia during pregnancy. They must strictly control their blood sugar. Only in this way can they give birth to a healthy and lively baby. They must go to the hospital for a blood sugar test in the middle of pregnancy to ensure that the child can develop well and grow up healthily in the warm womb of the mother.