Monthly Archives: August 2013

What is gestational diabetes?

Reproductive Health

What is gestational diabetes?

2013-08-02

By Alisha Ebrahimji

Babies may be born larger than normal because of a condition called gestational diabetes. That explains why baby Jasleen, born in Germany last week, weighed more than 13 pounds.

Her mother had gestational diabetes, but her condition wasn’t discovered until she went into labor and checked herself into University Hospital Leipzig.

Gestational diabetes develops during pregnancy and resembles other forms of diabetes in that it affects how your cells use sugar (glucose).

With gestational diabetes, a mother’s blood sugar should return to normal soon after delivery. However, the condition puts women at risk for type 2 diabetes in the future.

For every 100 pregnant women in the U.S, two to 10 will have gestational diabetes, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention says.

A woman who has gestational diabetes during pregnancy and maintains a high blood-sugar level may have a baby born abnormally large, weighing 9 pounds or more, the CDC says. A baby’s large size creates problems for the delivery of the child through the birth canal and may cause nerve damage in the child’s shoulder during birth.

“A very large baby has an increased chance of being overweight or obese later in life,” the CDC says. “Being overweight or obese increases the chance of also having diabetes later in life.”

Gestational diabetes results from hormonal changes that every woman has during pregnancy, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Elevated levels of certain hormones made in the placenta disrupt insulin’s ability to manage glucose, a condition called insulin resistance. (The placenta is the organ connecting the baby by the umbilical cord to the uterus and sends nutrients from mother to child.)

As the placenta becomes larger throughout pregnancy, it creates more hormones, which, in turn, increases the insulin resistance, the Cleveland Clinic said.

The mother’s pancreas is typically able to make three times the normal amount of insulin to beat this resistance, according to the Cleveland Clinic. If the pancreas can’t produce the required amount of insulin, however, sugar levels will rise, and the woman will have gestational diabetes.

You may be at risk for gestational diabetes if you are overweight before becoming pregnant, have a family history of diabetes, are older than 25, have previously giving birth to a baby over 9 pounds, previously gave birth to a stillborn baby, have had gestational diabetes with a previous pregnancy or have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, the Cleveland Clinic said.

Women typically find out whether they have gestational diabetes between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy, according to the Cleveland Clinic. That’s when insulin resistance usually begins.

If you previously had gestational diabetes or if your doctor is concerned about your risk of developing it, you can be tested for the condition before the 13th week of pregnancy, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

An oral glucose tolerance test is used to screen for gestational diabetes. This involves consuming 50 grams of glucose in a beverage. Your body will absorb the glucose and cause your blood sugar levels to rise within 30 to 60 minutes, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Blood samples are taken from a vein in your arm 30 minutes after consuming the sweetened drink so that your doctor can evaluate how your body processes glucose.

According to the Mayo Clinic, expectant mothers can control gestational diabetes by eating healthy foods, exercising and, if required, taking medication.

Treatment may include monitoring blood sugar four to five times a day, which involves drawing a drop of blood from your finger and testing it with a blood glucose meter.

Your health care providers will monitor and manage your blood sugar levels during labor and delivery. Following up with blood sugar checks after the baby is born is also important.

You can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes later on by continuing to eat a healthy diet and getting regular exercise.

CNN’s Dana Ford contributed to this report.

Your happiness type matters

Psycological Health

Your happiness type matters

2013-08-01

By Jen Christensen,

You feel happiness all the way down to your genes, scientists say. But the kind of happiness you’re feeling matters, as different kinds can have wildly different effects on your physical well-being.

In fact, the happiness you get from instant gratification — eating that giant cupcake or buying that fabulous pair of shoes — may have the same physical impact on your genes as depression or stress, according to a groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“I’ve been studying the physical and psychological impact of positive emotion for 20 years, (and) the pattern of results we found with this study completely surprised me,” said the lead author, Barbara Fredrickson.

Fredrickson is a professor of psychology and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at the University of North Carolina.

“I’ve known anecdotally that positive emotions impact us on a cellular level, but seeing these results have given us proof that there is a real difference in the kinds of happiness we feel and its potential long-term consequences.”

The experts divide well-being into two different types: hedonic and eudaimonic. These are fancy words to describe happiness that comes from two different sources.

Hedonic well-being comes from an experience a person seeks out that gives them pleasure. As study co-author Steve Cole describes it, it’s “having lots of positive experiences that come from, say, eating great food or smelling beautiful flowers.”

Eudaimonic well-being is a kind of happiness that comes not from consuming something but from a sustained effort at working toward something bigger than you. In other words, it’s working toward a sense of meaning in your life or contributing to some kind of cause. Think of the happiness you see on the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa’s face.

While the two kinds of happiness are conceptually different, they can and do influence each other, so it has been hard for scientists to measure which kind has had a greater positive influence on someone’s physical or psychological well-being.

Cole, a professor of medicine, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA, studies the biological pathways by which social environments influence gene expression.

“I know what misery looks like on a genetic level,” Cole said. “I can look at white blood cells and see a physical response to stress and misery, but we knew very little about how — if at all — positive psychology gets disseminated to the body. That’s what this study does.”

If you experience misery and stress, your genes react to it. Essentially, there is an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased antiviral response. People who are subjected to long periods of stress have white blood cells that make slightly more pro-inflammatory proteins on a constant basis.

Inflammation is the first line of defense against infection, so that would be a very useful kind of protein to have; however, something that causes your body to create inflammation over a sustained amount of time can cause collateral damage to healthy tissue.

Colorado College microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh, who is not affiliated with the study but is familiar with its contents, explains it this way: “The immune system of someone stressed out is not at the normal level of green on the terrorism alert scale. Instead, it’s on yellow or orange, if not all the way on red. So there’s this low level of constant inflammation, which is not healthy.”

Low levels of inflammation can cause exhaustion. They also increase a person’s risk for cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s and can damage various tissues wherever the white blood cells are causing inflammation where they shouldn’t be, Lostroh said.

With this understanding in mind, the scientists in the new study took blood from 80 healthy adults who were screened for the two types of happiness. None of them reported being depressed or stressed.

Scientists extracted the RNA from their blood and took a closer look at the inflammatory and antiviral responses.

The study found that people who experienced the well-being that comes from self-gratification had high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody gene expression, a result similar to what people who are depressed or experience great stress have.

Tell us your story!
We love to hear from our audience. Follow @CNNHealth on Twitter and Facebook for the latest health news and let us know what we’re missing.
The people who found happiness by pursuing a greater good had a lower level of this inflammatory gene expression and strong antiviral and antibody gene expression.

Bottom line? Happiness that comes from working for the greater good has a much more positive genetic impact.

“Keep in mind positives go with both kinds of well-being,” Fredrickson said. “But emotions you feel today … really will effect who you are at a cellular level.”

The study didn’t get at why the two kinds of well-being have different genetic impacts, but Cole has a theory.

“Hedonic well-being is dependent on your taking self-involved action to constantly feed this positive emotion machine,” he said. “If something threatens your ability to seek out this kind of personal happiness — if you get injured, for instance, or you experience a loss — your entire source of well-being is threatened. You are living closer to the edge of that kind of stress.

“But if you find well-being in the connections you have to others and in pursuing something that involves collaborating with other people, if in that circumstance you get sick or injured or suffer a personal loss, that community you’ve worked so hard to connect to, they will help you get through.”