Vitamin D deficiency increases pregnant women's risk of gestational diabetes, C-section delivery and other health conditions

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: vitamin D deficiency, gestational diabetes, C-section

(NaturalNews) A growing number of pregnant women are beginning to develop gestational diabetes during their pregnancy, usually around the 24th week. The American Diabetes Association estimates that 18 percent of hospital pregnancies are affected by gestational diabetes. This means that a woman is unable to make and use all the insulin she needs during pregnancy. This condition also increases the risk of Caesarean section delivery, which is a growing medical interventionist procedure.

The American Diabetes Association proposes vague risk factors, bypassing real dialogue about honest solutions. While the ADA points to genetics, ethnicity and maternal age as risk factors for developing gestational diabetes, they are distracting from cellular nutrition solutions, as they make their general correlations.

How would the ADA explain the rising incidences of gestational diabetes?
Are more pregnant women coming from a certain ethnicity?
Are more expectant mothers getting "bad genetics" from their ancestors?
The ADA's risk factors list bypasses real dialogue.

The real questions should be:
What are pregnant women lacking today?
What do their cells need?
What is going on at the molecular level?

Instead, the ADA parades behind a new law, the Gestational Diabetes Act of 2013, which calls on the federal government to provide better data collection, expand doctoral checkups and secure grants that expand current medical resources. Congress, completely brain-dead to real health solutions, isn't going to solve the problem, and the ADA is unlikely to report on real nutrition studies.

Either way, a detailed study from Korea may help shine a light on which direction to go in helping women reduce their risk of gestational diabetes and subsequent C-section deliveries. That answer is rooted in something as simple as nutrition - vitamin D.

Vitamin D study shows how pregnant women can reduce their risk of gestational diabetes and C-section deliveries, by supplementing with vitamin D

Vitamin D, the disease prevention powerhouse, was studied extensively for its role in healthy fetal development and prevention of gestational diabetes of expectant mothers. Here is a quick list of findings in the study:

First off, the study reports that vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy encompasses anywhere between 20-85 percent of women, depending on what country women live in.

They established that certain tissues secrete multiple hormones that regulate the physiology of the placenta and the pregnancy. Many regulators combine to modulate expression of chorionic gonadotropin, placental lactogen, estradiol and progesterone. This means that, at the molecular level, 25OHD is essential for maintaining normal pregnancy, fetal growth, calcium intake, secretion of adequate hormones and the cellular defense mechanism of limiting inflammatory cytokines. And that 25OHD level is directly influenced by vitamin D!

The researchers found that:

• Circulating 25OHD concentrations are reflective of vitamin D intake.

• The normal range, which is managed by vitamin D supplementation, is between 32ng/mL and 80ng/mL.

• Values below 32ng/mL were found to lead to glucose intolerance.

• Low 25OHD concentrations caused by lack of vitamin D cause higher pre-eclampsia rates. This can only be alleviated through the delivery of the placenta.

• Lack of vitamin D associated with higher incidence of Cesarean delivery
  

• Also, vitamin D regulates insulin secretion by pancreatic cells, affecting circulatory glucose levels.

• Vitamin D influenced the course of infectious disease during pregnancies.

• HIV-positive pregnant women lacking vitamin D transmitted disease more frequently to the infant.

Furthermore, inadequate vitamin D intake by the mother was also associated with these conditions in the child:

• low infant birth weight
• softening of skull bones
• impaired skeletal development
• rickets-associated infant heart failure
• acute lower respiratory tract infection
• later childhood bone development, asthma, type I diabetes
  

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

http://science.naturalnews.com

http://211.144.68.84

http://www.vrg.org

http://www.diabetes.org

http://www.diabetes.org