Health & Pregnancy

Gestational Diabetes Underdiagnosed

‘Most Women Won’t Need Drugs, Insulin’

Metzger says most women with mild gestational diabetes can be successfully treated with dietary and other lifestyle changes and will not need drugs or insulin.

But Homko points out that even lifestyle modification usually requires close medical supervision to be successful. She says there is also little consensus on the type of diet women with gestational diabetes should follow.

Metzger recommends a diet that balances protein, carbohydrates, and fats and is very low in simple sugars.

Lois Jovanovic, MD, counsels her gestational diabetes patients to eat a very low-carbohydrate diet.

Jovanovic, who is CEO and chief scientific officer of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Los Angeles, supports the new recommendations.

“If we don’t do something, more and more women are going to have big, sick babies and these babies will be the next generation of the type 2 diabetes epidemic,” she tells WebMD.