This is a YouTube video titled "Gestational Diabetes" containing a conversation recorded on March 9, 2021, between two speakers, Liz and Ask AI Mark. They discuss the diagnosis criteria, risks, and broader considerations related to gestational diabetes, including concerns about current testing standards and the impact of nutrition, obesity, ethnicity, and other factors on blood sugar management during pregnancy.
Officially, the diagnosis of gestational diabetes gets made at around 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy. There's a one hour glucose challenge test with 50 grams of dextrose. And if the one hour blood sugar is greater than 130, then they go on to do a more careful two hour glucose tolerance test, all done with blood sugar looking. So if you're fasting, blood sugar is greater than 95 or at two hours greater than 155, you're considered having gestational diabetes. And as we talked about, the big concerns are having a baby that's too big, which is called macrosomia. And that is if a baby is born greater than 8 pounds 13 ounces, and that's considered too big. And we know that that increases their risk of diabetes and insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease later in life.
Yeah, it's all true. And Liz, what I would say is, you know, these criteria are standard criteria.
Yes.
And I don't buy it. I don't buy it because, you know, if half of all of us have pre-diabetes or diabetes and 90% is undiagnosed, the pre-diabetes is also causing problems. Absolutely. And I think, you know, for women who have extra belly fat, who, you know, may have diabetes in their family, who are eating a lot of refined carbohydrates, even if their blood sugar is normal on this test, I'm not convinced. I want to see the insulin levels. Yep. I want to look at other biomarkers. I want to look at their lipids. because my guess is if we optimize a woman's nutrition during pregnancy to keep them in ideal sugar balance, that the baby is going to be healthier, they're going to be healthier, and that the risks are all going to go down. And I think we're not aggressive enough in how we put our parameters in of what's normal and not normal. Right?
Yeah, I agree with you.
If your blood sugar is 99, it's okay, but if it's 100, it's not.
Very true.
Does that make sense? No.
And one in every two women, so half of all women of childbearing age are either overweight or obese. And we know that women who are overweight or obese have a higher rate of gestational diabetes. So, you know, it is an area that we have to pay attention to. It's not the only thing that causes gestational diabetes though. You know, we know that there are some ethnicities that are at higher rates of gestational diabetes, Asian population at higher rates of gestational diabetes, even within normal weight. levels. We also know, of course, that having low lean muscle mass, not doing enough exercise. We also know that there's such a connection. We've talked about this time and time again between the microbiome and our toxic exposure and our genetic makeup that all influence how we manage our blood sugar and our insulin response to a meal that are really critical for us to be paying attention to.
