Health and Fitness Information Center

Gestational Diabetes

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Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes develops only in pregnant women with no previous history of diabetes. Nearly 135,000 U.S. women develop gestational diabetes each year.

Typically, gestational diabetes clears up on its own after women have delivered their babies. But studies show that about 40% of women with gestational diabetes go on to develop type 2 diabetes within 15 years. All pregnant women should be tested for gestational diabetes between their 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy.

Keeping a healthy weight, eating healthy food and regular exercise during pregnancy may help prevent insulin resistance and gestational diabetes.

Risk Factors

• Diabetes tends to run in families.
• Too many pounds increases insulin resistance.
• Native Americans, African-Americans, and people of Hispanic or Latino descent are at increased risk. Whites and Asians have a lower risk.

What Causes It?
Hormones may play a role. Pregnant women produce various hormones essential to their baby's growth. However, these hormones may interfere with the mother's body's ability to properly use insulin, causing insulin resistance.

All pregnant women have some degree of insulin resistance. But if this resistance becomes full-blown gestational diabetes, it usually appears around the 24th week of pregnancy. That's why all pregnant women should be screened for gestational diabetes around that time.