Archive for the 'HEALTH ISSUES' Category

Do you know how much weight you should gain during your pregnancy? What if you’re overweight? Should you try to lose weight?

Every woman who is pregnant needs to gain weight during her pregnancy. The amount you will need to gain will vary based on your starting weight.

The average recommended pregnancy weight gain is between 25 and 35 pounds.

Women who are underweight when they become pregnant will generally need to gain more than that.

Women who are overweight when they become pregnant will still need to gain between an additional 15 and 20 pounds to have healthy babies.

No mother-to-be should try to lose weight during pregnancy.

More important than how much you gain is how you gain the weight. You can easily pile on the pounds eating chocolate and ice cream, of course, but the best gain comes from a healthy diet. A healthy pregnancy diet includes:

• low fat milk or dairy (supplement with calcium if using unfortified soy milk),
• eggs, up to two each day
• lean protein, including chicken and fish
• dark green vegetables
• whole grains
• healthy fats and oils

Now that you are pregnant you will have to take better care of your health. You will want to eat better foods, which will give you lots of vitamins and minerals.

Cutting down on foods that are high in sugar, or that could break down into sugar, is probably a good thing to do, while you are pregnant.

Sometimes when you are pregnant, you can develop a type of diabetes that is called gestational diabetes. You may have never had a problem with too much sugar in your body before, but now that you are pregnant the diabetes is showing up on your blood test.

Cause of Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes will occur when your placenta produces hormones, and the hormones cause your body to resist insulin, that your pancreas produces. Sometimes your pancreas can not make enough insulin to solve this problem.

When your pancreas can not make enough insulin, you will have too much glucose that will remain in your blood. You will usually get gestational diabetes in the second trimester of your pregnancy, if it is going to occur.

If you are pregnant with multiple babies then you are probably feeling a little overwhelmed.

You may have a lot of questions about the changes your body will be going through.

This multiple pregnancy was totally unexpected and you are unsure what to do now.

When you are pregnant it is natural to gain some weight but with multiples you are probably wondering how much weight gain during pregnancy is safe and necessary for you to gain.

Your main concern is of course your health and your multiple babies’ health. You will not only want to eat the right quantity of food for good health but the right types of food also.

Gaining Enough Weight

It is really important when you are pregnant with multiple babies to gain the right amount of weight. You will want your babies to weigh enough so that they can survive after birth. Usually multiple birth babies have a low birth weight.

This is something that you will want to try to avoid. Gaining weight is a necessity between weeks twenty and twenty four during your pregnancy.

New guidelines on recommended weight gain during pregnancy have been released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM); one important new point is that these guidelines begin before women fall pregnant.

The IOM suggest that women should be at a healthy weight before attempting to fall pregnant.

If a woman is overweight or obese, it is recommended that she undergo preconception counseling to discuss weight, diet and exercise and to lose unnecessary weight before falling pregnant.

Upon falling pregnant the woman is to keep her weight gain within the guidelines and to keep within her before pregnancy BMI.

The Guidelines during pregnancy for a woman who is underweight, it is suggested that she gain between 28-40 pounds, a woman with a normal weight range her weight gain is between 25-35 pounds and if a woman is overweight she should only gain 15-25 pounds.

A normal weight woman only needs to consume an extra 300 calories per day in order for a healthy pregnancy and infant. A healthy balanced diet is recommended by Dr Melissa Goist, and that women should keep away from the candy bars, she explains that women still are not understanding that pregnancy is not the time to throw good eating habits away, as well as not feasting on carbohydrates and sweet foods.

Pregnancy will affect many parts of your body. Your stomach is getting larger and your legs and feet may be beginning to swell.

You may have started to walk funny with a waddle. As if you did not have enough things to deal with already you now have to deal with feet that are cracked and hurt.

This condition is usually caused by not enough moisture in your skin. It can also be affected by your skin type and your age.

Your skin cracking on your feet is not uncommon amongst pregnant women.

Things That Cause Cracked Feet

While you are pregnant you will be gaining extra weight and this extra weight can affect your feet. The extra pounds that you are gaining are adding pressure to the bottom of your feet and this can cause the cracking of your skin.

Also if you are a person who already has a problem with dry skin then you may be pre disposed to this condition. Your medications can also be a culprit when it comes to your feet becoming cracked. The ingredients in these medications may break down the oils in your feet.

A new study has found that the choices you make during your pregnancy can help determine whether or not you gain weight during the 12 month postpartum period.

In the study, pregnant women who did the best job of avoiding weight gain were the ones who were given dietary counseling along with probiotic capsules containing Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.

Probiotic supplementation begin during the first trimester of pregnancy and continued for 6 months after birth or as long as the women were exclusively breastfeeding.

Women who received dietary advice but only placebo capsules were almost twice as likely to be considered to have central obesity in the postpartum period.

Women who received no dietary advice or probiotics had about the same amount of weight gain as women who received only dietary advice.

It is not known exactly how the probiotics helped the women avoid gaining weight during the postpartum period. Additional studies will hopefully provide additional information.

However, encouraging healthy, normal bacteria in the intestines, together with a balanced healthy diet is a good plan for every woman, pregnant or otherwise.

The type of work you do can affect your pregnancy outcome.

Women who are pregnant and who work in jobs that are physically demanding, or who work in jobs that have long or irregular hours may be more likely to have a baby who is underweight, or to deliver their baby prematurely. [Premature Birth]

In a study of over 1,100 women, researchers found that pregnant women who were very physically active in their jobs were more likely to have a baby with a low birth weight.

About 21 percent of the women delivered babies who were underweight, while only 14 percent of women who worked at less physically demanding jobs delivered underweight babies.

Being born underweight can lead to a number of problems in newborns, including respiratory distress syndrome.

Working long hours, more than 40 per week, and working on shifts also increased the risk of a woman’s baby being underweight when born, and of delivering her baby prematurely.

Temporary work increased the risk of having a premature delivery four times over that of having a regular, full-time job.

The reasons for this are uncertain, though researchers suspect that temporary jobs may involve higher stress levels, and involve working conditions that are not as good.

Pregnancy is supposed to be a wonderful time in a woman’s life.

Heart trouble during pregnancy is something that an expectant mother sometimes has to deal with.

During pregnancy, a mother’s heart increases in output by fifty percent. This makes their heart have to work much harder to take care of their body.

Even if you are a healthy woman, you may still suffer from fatigue and headaches during pregnancy, which can be sign of heart diseases.

Heart disease during pregnancy can be from family genetics or simply brought on by the pregnancy. If you are a woman who has had trouble with her heart then you should seek a physician’s advice before becoming pregnant.

Deep Vein Thrombosis

During pregnancy, some women develop Deep Vein Thrombosis, which is a cardiovascular complication. If you have this complication while you are pregnant, a blood clot will develop into your leg or your lower body.

When you get further along in your pregnancy, your uterus will enlarge and your circulation in the lower half of your body will change. This is why you are at a greater risk for Deep Vein Thrombosis during this time.

Pregnancy definitely means weight gain. If you have a healthy fetus inside you, then it is supposed to grow and as a result of which you are supposed to gain weight.[Pregnancy weight gain]

However pregnancy is not your license to gain all the weight you want.

You should be aware of the consequences of being overweight during pregnancy.

Unhealthy weight gain during pregnancy can not only lead to complications during delivery, but also affect the health of the child post birth.

If you have been a healthy individual all along, you should typically gain around 25 to 35 pounds during pregnancy. If you have been lean and low weight all along then the number should be 28 to 40 pounds.

However if you have been overweight, you need to be cautious and are allowed to gain from 15 to 25 pounds. The average woman is supposed to gain 29 to 31 pounds during the whole period of pregnancy.

Too Much Weight Gain during Pregnancy

The modern 21st century has given us a lot in terms of amenities, but when it comes to child birth people tend to retain faith in old world beliefs.

Pregnancy calls for a lot of sacrifices. People change the way they live right on the day they see the purple line on the test card.

Yes, pregnancy does bring in changes in you and you are also supposed to change with pregnancy.

Discussing about all changes that come and all that you need to bring in is beyond the scope of this article. We will discuss about the gestational diabetes diet in pregnant women here.

Gestational diabetes

Let us now take a look at what is gestational diabetes? Gestational diabetes is also known as diabetes mellitus. GDM is found to occur only in pregnant women.

If a women gets diabetic during pregnancy, but never had the disease before, chances are high that it is gestational diabetes.

If you are worried about the disease affecting the fetus, then you should stick to a gestational diabetes diet. A gestational diabetes diet has mostly to do with the carbohydrate content that you intake, but there are other food forms also included in gestational diabetes diet.

If you have diabetes during pregnancy or gestational diabetes, your body is unable to produce insulin properly or the insulin produced is unable to act properly.