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"Bacon, Eggs, and Gestational Diabetes During Pregnancy "
Gestational diabetes, high blood sugar levels
that develop when you're pregnant,
is one of the most common complications of pregnancy.
It’s associated with abnormal fetal growth,
infant mortality, pre-eclampsia
(which can put the mom's health at risk),
and various major birth defects.
Is there anything we can do to prevent it?
Well, the Harvard Nurses Health study found
that eating meat before pregnancy appeared to
increased subsequent diabetes risk during pregnancy.
They suggest that the carcinogenic nitrosamines
in bacon and other processed meat may be
toxic to insulin producing cells.
This may be why ham and other lunch meats
may play a role in initiating type 1 diabetes,
but increased risk was also found
for non-processed meat too.
So instead it may be the glycotoxins,
the advanced glycation end products formed in meat
causing inflammation, which has been tied to gestational diabetes.
More recently, though, attention has turned
to the blood-based heme iron in animal products.
Higher pre-pregnancy intake of dietary heme iron
is associated with an increased gestational diabetes risk.
Now we've known that the intake of the heme iron
from animal products was associated with increased risk
of type 2 diabetes in women,
but we didn't know about the gestational diabetes until recently.
Now for type 2 diabetes, only animal-based iron
was associate with diabetes risk,
the more plant-based, or non-heme iron, was not.
This is thought to be because our bodies
can't regulate the absorption of the blood-based iron as well,
and so chronically high intakes can lead
to too much in the body.
The same thing was found for gestational diabetes.
Blood-based iron was associated with
as much as triple the increased risk,
but if anything there was a trend towards
the non-heme or plant-based iron
being protective against diabetes.
Either way, this explains why
pregnant women who eat vegetarian
appear to be at significantly lower risk
of developing diabetes.
But this study was in India,
where vegetarians tend to avoid eggs as well.
A more recent Harvard study found
that higher pre-pregnancy intakes
of animal fat and cholesterol were associated with
elevated gestational diabetes risk.
Substituting in 5% animal fat for 5% carbs
was associated with a 13% increased risk of gestational diabetes,
but if it’s not just the animal fat but the cholesterol too,
then one would expect eggs to increase one's risk
of diabetes during pregnancy as well.
But it had never been directly studied, until now.
The risk of gestational diabetes
in relation to maternal egg intake.
Apparently, the more eggs women ate
before getting pregnant and during early pregnancy,
the higher their risk of developing diabetes
during their pregnancies.
And these findings are consistent with other studies
documenting associations with cholesterol intake
and the development of regular type 2 diabetes
in men and non-pregnant women.
In fact, women who develop gestational diabetes
are like 7 times more likely to go on
to develop type 2 diabetes later in life,
so pregnancy is viewed as a teachable moment.
Pregnant women are often highly motivated
to make healthy lifestyle changes
for both their own health and that of their offspring.
Thus, pregnancy may be a critical opportunity
for both short- and long-term behavior modification
representing a window of opportunity
for health care providers to change lifestyle patterns
toward the acquisition of healthier habits.