Nearly 135,000 women develop gestational diabetes each year. Typically, gestational diabetes clears up on its own after women have delivered their babies. But studies have shown that about 40 percent 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 your weight down, eating healthfully, and exercising regularly may help prevent insulin resistance and the development of diabetes.
Pregnant women produce various hormones essential to the baby's growth.
However these hormones may also make it hard for the mother 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. Because both gestational and type 2 diabetes develop due to insulin resistance, researchers suspect that these two conditions have a similar genetic basis.