The equation is simple. Increasingly there is obesity in the population, especially in adolescents and children, obesity causes type 2 diabetes and consequently more and more babies are born to diabetic mothers.
Diabetic women who become pregnant (I do not talk about gestational diabetes that develops in pregnancy, but about women who had diabetes before pregnancy) are at greater risk of complications during pregnancy, and in turn your baby is more likely to Develop diabetes in the future. That is, the disease is spreading from generation to generation.
A study in the United States showed that pre-pregnancy diabetes rates increased more than twice in six years among adolescents and adult women. They added that diabetes increased five times among women aged 13 to 19 who gave birth and doubled among women aged 20 to 39 who were mothers.
If childhood obesity is considered as an epidemic in that country, we can already see what is coming in the next few years, since today's diabetic girls are the ones who will have children tomorrow with many possibilities of being too.
But that is not the only problem that diabetes poses for a pregnancy. Women who have difficulty controlling their blood sugar are at greater risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or giving birth to a baby with birth defects.
Therefore, it is essential that the diabetic woman plans her pregnancy and seeks professional advice before conceiving since her pregnancy is considered risky. This means that pregnancy should be more controlled than that of a healthy woman.
The study has been conducted in the United States, but in Spain we are going the same way. In fact, we have already seen that it is the country with the most childhood obesity in Europe, so it is expected that obese girls who have developed or will develop type 2 diabetes in adolescence, will one day be mothers and will also transmit the possibility to their children of suffering from the disease
Finally, the words of the author of the research: "With the increasing prevalence of diabetes and obesity in society, it is very important that we begin to evaluate this issue." I think so.
