A Primal Look at Gestational Diabetes
Every pregnant woman I’ve ever known has hated the oral glucose tolerance test. Yet, they still do it. Drinking a tall glass of sickly sweet orange-flavored glucose water on an empty stomach is thoroughly disgusting, but it, apparently, offers a rare and valuable glimpse into the state of a woman’s perinatal health. What they’re testing for is gestational diabetes mellitus—a variant of diabetes characterized by pancreatic insufficiency during pregnancy. Sometimes it’s a misdiagnosis. Low-carb, high-fat diets transiently increase insulin resistance. This isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature to ensure you keep burning fat in the tissues that can and preserve precious glucose for the sections of the brain that must burn glucose. But this also means that taking a gestational diabetes test while low-carb can give a false diagnosis. Moreover, pregnancy in general throws glucose tolerance out of whack. Just like a low-carb diet can induce insulin resistance to temporarily preserve glucose for