People who would like to understand what is gestational diabetes have to be told that it occurs when an undesirable sugar level is detected in women during pregnancy. The pancreas is incapable of producing insulin or using the insulin that is produced in an appropriate way. This disease usually affects approximately 3 to 6 percent of gravid women.

The condition commonly begins between the fifth and sixth month of gravidity and wanes soon after delivery.

Customarily, the pancreas will produce the required quantity of insulin to accommodate the amount of sugar in the body. However, if the individual is diabetic, the pancreas produces very little insulin or no insulin at all. The body cells fail to normally regulate to the amount of sugar in the body system.

A woman suffering from the disease has her body generate the right quantity of insulin. However, the normal function of insulin is partially obstructed by a variety of hormones produced by the placenta. The hormones include cortisol, prolactin, oestrogen, progesterone, and the human placental lactogen. This process is known as insulin resistance and it begins 20 to 28 weeks into the pregnancy.

As the placenta continues growing, more hormones are generated and the insulin resistance increases. In most expectant women, the pancreas is capable of processing extra insulin which helps to overcome the insulin resistance. Diabetes will occur when the pancreas generates insulin and the amount is still not sufficient to overcome the effects of the hormones.

Normally, women ask their doctors what is gestational diabetes for they are perplexed when told it does not exhibit any symptoms hence the need for universal screening. However, a number of women may exhibit increased urination, fatigue, bladder infection, blurred vision, increased thirst, nausea and vomiting and yeast infections.

Any pregnant woman can get affected. However, there are some risk factors that make some women more susceptible to this illness. These dangers include an earlier diagnosis of the disease or prediabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, family history, poor obstetric history, maternal age of over 35 years, overweight, an unexplained stillbirth, a baby with a birth defect and high blood pressure.

Treatment for this disease involves getting sufficient exercise, a sensibly planned diet, sustaining a healthy weight during pregnancy, checking glucose levels and, if essential, regular insulin injections. When poorly controlled or untreated, the disease may lead to complications which can cause the baby to develop hypoglycemia at birth, jaundice, macrosomia, respiratory distress syndrome, stillbirth and even death during infancy.

The objective of treatment is to decrease the dangers of GDM for the mother and child. Scientific proof shows that regulating the levels of glucose can increase the maternal quality of life and lead to less severe foetal problems such as macrosomia.

Anybody seeking to find out what is gestational diabetes usually becomes confused because it goes away after delivery. However, when a woman has had the condition, the probability for its recurrence in subsequent future pregnancies is about 75 percent. In some women, pregnancy discloses insulin-dependent or non-insulin dependent diabetes.

In other women, the disease increases their prospects of getting Type II diabetes. Most doctors will consider the pregnancy to be a high-risk situation but this does not mean that the expectant woman will have complications. Keeping the blood sugar at normal levels increases the chances of having a pregnancy that is trouble free.