A baby, your weight, and diabetes
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Nicholas Garlow with HHS HealthBeat.
If you plan to get pregnant, your weight can affect your risk of getting gestational diabetes; a form of diabetes that is diagnosed during pregnancy. Researchers saw this in data from 22,000 women who had their first or second pregnancy from 1996 to 2006.
Samantha Ehrlich is at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California.
"Women who gained body mass in between pregnancies increased their risk of developing gestational diabetes in the second pregnancy. Women who lost body mass in between pregnancies decreased their risk." (12 seconds)
She recommends:
"Lose weight prior to becoming pregnant, particularly those women who have had gestational diabetes in a previous pregnancy." (6 seconds)
The study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.