• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Kids at Risk For Diabetes

Registered Nurse, Diabetes Educator, CDE, Obesity, Children, Youth, Lifestyle

  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Resources
    • My Video Lectures

diabetes

The Link between Pregnancy and Diabetes    

03/10/2020 by Julie RN DCES 1 Comment

The Link Between Pregnancy & Diabetes

Did you know there’s a connection between Pregnancy and Diabetes? And did you know there’s also a connection between Gestational Diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes?

Read on to understand the connections.

Scenario:

Woman in her late twenties gets pregnant. At 26 weeks, she takes an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and is diagnosed with gestational diabetes. She is challenged to keep her blood sugar within the recommended zone.

At 32 weeks gestation, she starts having trouble with high blood pressure (hypertension). Her doctor admits her into the hospital on mandatory bed rest. They give her drugs to encourage fetal lung development. She is informed she will be induced.

During the induction, it is determined the baby is not in the head down position. She is immediately scheduled for a C-section.

After delivery, the new mother’s blood sugar is higher than normal. Her baby has a poor sucking reflex which makes it difficult to nurse. For some unknown reason, the nurses want the new mother to nurse at least every hour. The medical staff informs her that stress can cause elevated blood sugars and she is not to worry.

Follow-up appointment:

Her doctor recommends she returns for a follow-up appointment at 3 weeks. She feels that is a little odd, but they explain it is the new recommendation and will be covered by her insurance.

At 3 weeks, she is feeling better and the baby is doing better nursing. They take a random blood sugar test and it is a little high. She explained that since she was out of the house, she treated herself to a deep dish pizza. She believes that her lunch was the reason her blood sugars were a little high because every time she ate pizza while she was pregnant, her blood sugars would go up for a long time. Her nurse smiled and said, “We’ll keep an eye on it.”

At her next follow-up appointment, her doctor required an A1c test. Her result was 6.8. She was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She now blames her pregnancy on her diagnosis and she is convinced it will go away.

What went wrong?

Chances are she was prediabetic (aka borderline diabetic) before the pregnancy. Her fasting blood sugar tests were normal, because through the night her body could bring her blood sugar into normal range.

The A1c test is an average blood sugar test over the previous 2-3 months. Unfortunately, once you are diagnosed, you will always be flagged as at-risk for high blood sugar.

Pregnancy places a stress on your body in many ways. There are a lot of hormone shifts during pregnancy. Diabetes is caused by the hormones required to grow the placenta. The larger the placenta gets, the more you become at risk for high blood sugar.

This is the reason the oral glucose tolerance test is delayed until 26-28 weeks gestation. After delivery and you expel the placenta, your body should go back to normal.

One complication from uncontrolled blood sugar is eclampsia. This is a chemical reaction that causes uncontrolled high blood pressure. It causes heart problems and sometimes death of the baby and/or the mother.

When blood pressure (BP) starts to increase, doctors are proactive and require strict bed rest to prevent the chemical progression of pre-eclampsia into eclampsia. The doctor will induce as soon as it is safe. Many times, the baby is not in the correct position, so the doctor will do a C-section.

Typically, your blood sugar will go back to normal after delivery. But we all gain weight with pregnancy. It is very possible someone can develop insulin resistance from the weight gain. Hopefully this is a temporary condition. Sometimes it can take over a year to lose the weight. If you have developed insulin resistance, you can have prolonged sugar problems.

THE LINK BETWEEN PREGNANCY AND DIABETES

Once diagnosed, always a diabetic

The standard for diagnosing type two diabetes has changed. Previously, you needed two fasting blood sugar results over 125. Today, you only need one.

The medical community is trying to diagnose earlier in this disease progression to encourage lifestyle changes. Women who develop Gestational Diabetes are at high risk for developing Type 2.

Over 40% will be diagnosed within 5 years. When this disease is diagnosed early, there is a better chance of reversing it. Your diagnosis may be changed to T2 in remission, but you will always be at risk of it returning as you age.

Knowledge is Power

The internet has a lot of suggestions to reverse diabetes. Unfortunately, many of the suggestions you’ll find online are false or misleading. The American Diabetes Association encourages a balanced lifestyle. Remember, only 1% of people who attempt irrational weight control are successful in the long run. Yo-yo dieting is very hard on your body and can cause other health problems.

Slow and steady wins the race!

Many people need support to make and maintain new habits. If you need help setting realistic goals and sticking to what you really want to do, I can help you.

 

About the author

Julie Stelting is a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree in nutrition. She is the founder of Kids at Risk for Diabetes LLC. Julie designed a program for gestational diabetes, to help women understand and cope with their diagnosis. She is passionate about preventing or delaying diabetes through holistic lifestyle changes.

For more information go to www.kidsatriskfordiabetes.com, or email Julie directly at Julie@kidsatriskfordiabetes.com.

 

Pin
Share
Share
Tweet

Filed Under: Diabetes, gestational diabetes Tagged With: diabetes, gestational diabetes, pregnancy

Cognitive Behavior Weight Loss

11/13/2019 by Julie RN DCES Leave a Comment

change your life with cognitive behavior changes

Change your thinking and change your life. Your life is a result of your daily decisions. Perceptions can be changed with a single thought. You must believe that cognitive behavior weight loss is indeed possible. What does that mean? Keep reading…

What is your motivation?

What is your motivation to change your life? When you reach the point where your weight is unacceptable, you will make changes in your lifestyle.

To make sustainable lifestyle changes you must:

  1. Change your thinking
  2. Manage your environment
  3. Take a long-range view

As a diabetes care and support manager, I am trained in how to maintain sustainable changes in your life. What does sustainable mean? It means that you can continue it on an ongoing basis. Diabetes is directly related to excess weight. It is a chronic disease, so it is important to manage your weight gain over a lifetime, therefore, by sustainable means.

We have all tried to lose weight on diets. We can deny ourselves for a while, but we give up and go back to our old eating habits. Then we feel like failures.

We need to change our thinking by identifying your why and focusing on it every day. Have you taken the time to evaluate what motivates you? That is the first step.

Be realistic

Be realistic! When you go on a low carb diet, you are going to crave carbohydrates. Your body’s main fuel supply is carbohydrates. So when you reduce your carbs, you feel tired. But carbohydrates are not your enemy.

There are limits to our energy to deny what we crave. Don’t try to change all your bad eating habits at the same time. Make a list of your cravings and prioritize them.

Pick one to focus on. For example, potato chips. Look at the serving size and measure out one serving. Put the chip bag away. Enjoy your one serving of chips once a day. Celebrate your ability to control your cravings. When this is an automatic behavior, pick another one or two on your list. Don’t try to deny all your poor eating habits at the same time.

Manage your environment – Plan ahead.

Out of sight = Out of mind

Make it harder to do what is bad. You are going to get hungry. Set a bowl of fruit or nuts where you can see them and put away the bag of chips. When you are hungry, eat the fruit.

Another way is to not purchase the bag of chips, thereby controlling your environment.

In-sight = in mind

Plan for healthy snacks like yogurt or cheese sticks. Keep in mind sweet snacks are digested quickly leaving you hungry again. Snacks with high fiber like nuts and seeds or protein snacks protect against hunger longer. Plan ahead for your snacks and stick to it.

Plan ahead for non-food rewards

I encourage everyone to journal daily. Record your successes and reward yourself with non-food items. Consider a massage, a date night, maybe even a trip. There are a wide variety of ways to reward yourself with non-food items. Celebrate your victories!

Write about your failures. You will have failures. It is important to take time to evaluate what went wrong. Learn from your failures.

Take a long-range view – expect setbacks

Record in your journal your feelings. Many people do not have good coping skills. If you have a bad day, know that tomorrow is a new opportunity. Forgive yourself and learn from your setbacks. Research healthy ways to cope with stress. Practice what works best for you. Promise yourself to try harder tomorrow.

Focus on the times when things went right. Celebrate your victories. Each evening (maybe when you are watching television) review your day and journal your successes. Feel good about your progress. Having a written record is important to remember your growth. Your journal will help you realize how much you have grown.

Cognitive behavior weight loss

My ebook, Parent’s Guide to Healthy Kids, emphasizes cognitive-behavioral dieting. There are many tricks to making sustainable changes. Previously I suggested journaling while watching television. This is called stacking habits.

Stacking habits is setting up cues for remembering healthy habits. My ebook goes into more details and more suggestions! I hope you’ll check it out!

Click here to check out my eBook: Parent’s Guide to Healthy Kids!

If you know of anyone who could benefit from cognitive behavioral dieting, be a good friend and share this blog post with them! If you have questions that aren’t answered here, you can email me at Julie@kidsatriskfordiabetes.com.

Pin
Share
Share
Tweet

Filed Under: Diabetes, Health Tagged With: diabetes, health, lifestyle

Stages of Motivation

02/07/2017 by Julie RN DCES 7 Comments

Stages of Motivation refers to the process of deciding and then acting on your decision to make lifestyle changes, to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes...

Stages of Motivation

There are stages you go through with any change in your life. This refers to the stages of motivation. Pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and then falling off the wagon. Think of how many times you have started a diet, maybe been successful losing weight, and then falling back into old habits.   

Stages of Motivation for Changes

There are many stages of motivation for lifestyle changes. Many times we do really well, and we backslide. Then we may find the motivation to improve our lives again. And probably backslide again. We can’t teach children the same way we teach adults. I believe if we can teach them healthy lifestyles as children, it will carry over into adulthood.

But what motivates you to make changes? That is a hard question that only you can answer. A good coach can give suggestions but only you know what works for you. Communication is key. You have to work with someone you trust and be willing to communicate with them.

The first stage is education

The first stage is to be educated enough to know what to do. Most diabetes educators try to educate you on the problems high blood sugars cause in your body. They may focus on the complications high blood sugars can cause, like heart attacks and blindness and lower limb amputations. But many people get overwhelmed with everything involved with diabetes management and just give up. We can never give up on our kids!

I ask you – what will it take for you to seriously make life changes?  

A motivation that says: I don’t care what it takes, I won’t put up with this anymore.

I will take charge of life….  quit living a life of default, and do what is best for my family!

Just be aware, if you are diagnosed with prediabetes, 99% of you will become diabetic if no changes in your lifestyle are made. I have seen so many diabetics take it seriously after the damage of high blood sugar is done. Diabetes Prevention Research show 58% of people who take charge of their lives when diagnosed with prediabetes can prevent this progression. It can be done. Seventy percent of people over 60 years old have successfully prevented or delayed this progression through lifestyle changes. (Could they be more motivated by their age?)

The choice is yours. But your success will be greater with a life coach to keep you on target. If you have diabetes or want to avoid your kids from getting diabetes, I have a 30 day virtual course you might be interested in! Contact me for more details at Julie@kidsatriskfordiabetes.com or schedule a phone consultation with me.

Pin
Share
Share
Tweet

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: diabetes, motivation

Primary Sidebar

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest

Featured Posts

7 Causes of Infertilty, and possible solutions.

7 Causes of Infertility

Preconception health matters! Especially when you are trying to get pregnant and you have either gestational diabetes or prediabetes. Go to my website for more info about my 30 Day Virtual Gestational Diabetes Course. www.kidsatriskfordiabetes.com

Prediabetes & Birth Defects

Prevent PCOS

Stages of Motivation refers to the process of deciding and then acting on your decision to make lifestyle changes, to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes...

Stages of Motivation

Before Footer

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Disclaimer

Copyright © 2023 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in