Gestational Diabetes Increases Risk Of Later Diabetes In African-American Women

Retrospective analysis of medical data shows that African American women with  gestational diabetes are nearly 10 times as likely to develop later diabetes. 

Anny H. Xiang, MD, of Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena, reviewed 140,000 cases occurring between 1995 and 2008 of pregnant women. While the prevalence of gestational diabetes were similar among African-American and white women, in the years following their pregnancies, blacks had a 9.2 times higher risk for developing full-fledged diabetes.

Other ethnic groups have a higher prevalence of  gestational diabetes than African American women, though less risk for later diabetes. Hispanic women had the next highest incidence rate of later diabetes, with Asian/Pacific women having the lowest risk.

"Whether this difference is due to genetics, environment, lifestyle, or other differences among ethnic groups will require further investigation," they wrote.

They concluded that ethnicity should be considered in screening and counseling women who develop gestational diabetes, and particularly for blacks.

Women with gestational diabetes often control their blood glucose levels through diet and exercise and medications like insulin, if prescribed. Fetal complications such as macrosomia ("big baby syndrome") and jaundice are common in unresolved cases.

Why Can Remedies Damage a Diabetes Patient?

The biggest problem when a person has to deal with diabetes is the landslide of information that will arrive from all sides surrounding him or her. Even though he or she will receive sufficient information from the physicians and other health related professionals that will provide him or her with all the knowledge that is necessary to properly adapt and adjust to this new health condition; there are many “do-gooders” that will provide their own “2 cents” in terms of hearsay, common remedies and other cures.

To some people the diagnosis of diabetes might be a dooming thing; others will take it as it presents itself, one day at a time without indulging into chaotic thoughts and a disastrous perception. However, in both cases, there will be at least one occasion where they will listen to all the home-made remedies and try to fix, cure, correct, help or in any other way modify their already existing condition.

Some of them are actually unprocessed versions of the medications that the diabetics will require, their properties can even help the patient to get rid of sugar and other dangerous active ingredients in his or her daily diet. Yet, in other cases, while they “fix” one thing, they seriously damage other. Food interaction with the strict intention of making a remedy out of them has to be monitored up-close by a physician.

The importance of this does not only lie on the fact that the main ingredients inside a food, a home-remedy or that special “fix-it-all” plate could make diabetes worse for the patient. But also to the fact that there are some cases when the patient has a particular allergy to a specific thing meaning that even in those cases when the remedy has the best intention, it can put the patient’s life in jeopardy.

Who is to Blame When an Elderly Diabetes Patient Dies?

Modern day medicine has been able to provide with a wonderful lifestyle for patients with any type of diabetes. Specialists in the development of proper nutritional intakes have crafted each day new and more efficient menus and other foods (both in supplements as well as in full coursed meals) that will allow diabetes patients to indulge with very tasty meals that will not harm or endanger their own health.

Nonetheless, the most difficult patients are the elderly. These patients often live by themselves and have no one to monitor what are they eating but themselves. This allows elderly diabetes patients to “cheat” on their diets as often as they can or their financial income allows them.

It is often that when children and relatives come to visit them, they find themselves with an elderly that is in bad shape or that has not been able to master and control the ups and downs of mood changes and personality swings that are so common with this disease. To the dismay of their relatives who tend to withdraw after a few days of badmouthing and other psychological disorders, they tend to leave their elderly relative alone.

This causes most of the “forgotten” deaths of the elderly that are affected with this disease. Such deaths often take a high toll in terms of the perception of the surviving relatives who blame themselves for not being patient enough or strong enough to make the elderly relative adjust better to his or her new diabetic condition.

Naturally, a diabetes related death might be more in the hands of the patient him or herself that in the family members that are the ones that believe that they should be able to keep track of the patient’s food intake habits.

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