Thinking Nutrition

For the latest nutrition research and controversies

  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
    • Cancer
    • Diabetes
    • Gut Health
    • Mental Health
    • Women’s Health
    • Child Health
    • Heart Health
    • Eating Well
    • Managing Weight
    • Nutrition Supplements
    • Getting Active
    • Mythbusting
  • Podcast
  • In the Media
  • Services
  • Privacy
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Women's Health / Treating gestational diabetes with a high blood pressure diet

Treating gestational diabetes with a high blood pressure diet

April 16, 2014 by Tim Crowe 1 Comment

gestational diabetes diet
Pregnancy by Tatiana Vdb. CC BY 2.0

A diet first designed to help treat high blood pressure has shown some promising results in improving pregnancy outcomes in women with gestational diabetes.

Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a form of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy, affecting around 8 percent of all pregnancies. The high blood sugars from the diabetes can result in the developing baby growing too large, causing birth complications. Following delivery, the baby can also experience low blood glucose levels caused from being removed from the glucose-rich environment of the mother. The mother also suffers a much higher lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The first steps in treating GDM are lifestyle changes, including changes to diet where needed. There is some evidence that a lower glycaemic index (GI) diet may help with GDM, but overall there is not a lot of solid evidence for what are the best dietary changes to make.

Towards a gestational diabetes diet

One novel dietary pattern that has been considered as a candidate for treating GDM is the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. First designed to treat high blood pressure, it has also been positively tested in type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

A DASH diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, moderate in low-fat dairy and low in animal proteins, refined grains and high sugar foods. The DASH diet is also considered a low GI diet so it appears on the money for a positive recommendation for treating GDM.

Involving 52 women living in Iran diagnosed with GDM, a 4-week trial looked at how a DASH diet or a balanced nutrient profile control diet fared as their pregnancy progressed to delivery. Each woman was randomly allocated to one of the two diets and adherence to their allocated diet was checked by weekly phone interviews and self-completed diet diaries. The average gestational age at the start of the diet was close to 26 weeks.

What the study found

For such a small trial, the results appeared quite impressive. Twelve of the 26 women (46%) in the DASH diet group required a caesarean section compared to 21 out of 26 (81%) in the control diet group. The number of women that eventually required insulin therapy to manage their GDM showed a similar difference with just 6 (23%) in the DASH group compared to 19 (73%) in the control group.

The average weight of infants born to mothers on the DASH diet was significantly lower at 3.2 kg versus 3.8 kg in the control diet group. This was a positive outcome as GDM is a major risk factor for large birth weight infants.

What it all means

This first use of a DASH style diet to treat GDM has shown some impressive results. If such results can be replicated in other clinical trials, then a DASH dietary pattern could be on the menu soon for all women with GDM.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Women's Health Tagged With: DASH diet, diabetes, gestational diabetes, pregnancy

Comments

  1. Monica Morgan says

    August 19, 2019 at 8:56 pm

    I am from Australia, i am 45 years old, i have been suffering from Diabetes for about 2 years, i do everything to regulate my sugar level but i had to look for further search on how to cure myself permanently then i came across Robinsonbuckler @hotmail. com, i contacted him and he said he could cure me, i never believed but i had to give it a try and then he made a herbal Medicine for me which he asked me to take for 2 weeks, which i did i followed all his instruction and after 2 weeks i went for a test and surprisingly, i was cured, my body system came back to normal, everything was fine with me, this is unbelievable, thanks to Robinson Buckler šŸ™‚šŸ™‚

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sign up for updates

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Posts

  • How do the plant-based milks compare?
  • Magnesium: foods, functions and supplemental forms
  • Drink tea, stay healthy and carry on
  • Got iron? Foods, functions and insufficiencies
  • The science of soy: health, harms and hyperbole

Most Popular Posts

  • "Broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic bad"
  • Steam, boil or fry? How cooking affects nutrient losses from foods
  • Eat vegetables to live longer
  • This is your brain on blueberries
  • 12 steps to writing a best-selling diet book
  • How using chopsticks can be good for your health

Get the Book

Understanding NutritionNow in its fourth edition, Understanding Nutrition is the leading text used in nutrition and dietetics courses in Australia and New Zealand. As one of the coauthors, I step you through core topics such as diet planning, macronutrients, vitamins and minerals and follow this with chapters on diet and health, sports nutrition, lifespan nutrition and food safety.

Work with me

If you have a project you would like to discuss be it website or newsletter content, blog or magazine articles, media copy or scientific writing (a career in medical research means I’m pretty handy in writing and reviewing papers and grants) then please get in touch with me.

Back to Top of Page ↑

Creative Commons Licence
Thinking Nutrition by Dr Tim Crowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Copyright © 2021 Ā· Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework Ā· WordPress Ā· Log in