r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/uju_rabbit • 2d ago
Question - Research required Does eating fruit during pregnancy increase the risk of gestational diabetes?
I live in Korea, and am currently in the second trimester of my pregnancy. My gestational diabetes test is coming up soon, and my obgyn keeps telling me to limit fruit intake or not eat fruit at all. He says it has sugar and that can cause diabetes. Other expectant mothers here have been told similar things by their doctors.
I can understand limiting processed foods, junk food, and candy, but fruit? Just raw, fresh fruit? Is there any science to back this up?
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u/equistrius 2d ago
Gestational diabetes is caused by the hormones made by your placenta interfering with insulin production. There is nothing you can do to prevent it and the exact cause is still unknown. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/diabetes/gestational-diabetes
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u/Evamione 2d ago
All we know about causes is it may be tied to type 2 diabetes genetic risk. As in, if you have parents/grandparents/other close relatives with type 2 diabetes, your odds of gestational diabetes is higher than if you don’t. But you can still get it even if no one in your family has diabetes, and you can still not have it even if all your family elders have it. Once you get gestational diabetes, your odds of eventually developing type 2 diabetes is higher than it would otherwise be. Just like if you get preeclampsia your odds of developing hypertension go up. The working theory of both is that pregnancy reveals the tendency and not causes it but who really knows.
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u/floccinaucinili 2d ago
Please correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that type 2 diabetes was more about lifestyle factors:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/type-2-diabetes/what-is-type-2-diabetes/
‘ Type 2 diabetes is different to type 1 diabetes, which is caused by a problem with your immune system. Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes may be prevented. You can manage type 2 diabetes with diet and exercise, or medicines’
Interested as do have type 2 diabetes in family (caused, I was told, by lifestyle)
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u/Evamione 2d ago
It also has a genetic component. Some people will end up with type 2 diabetes even while always maintaining a healthy weight and diet. Others never develop it even through they spend forty years having cake for breakfast and weigh what you expect from that. If one family member has type 2 diabetes, the odds their children and siblings will also develop it are higher than the general population.
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u/JeweledShootingStar 2d ago
Yea my dad has been a healthy weight his entire life, worked jobs where he is active multiple hours a day, and eats good, healthy, home cooked meals and found out he’s type 2 when he was recovering from a surgery. We were all shocked lol
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u/Jane9812 2d ago
Did they tell you he must have been sneaking sweets and cheeseburgers? I would expect lots of people to think shit like that.
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u/cinderparty 1d ago
My step-grandpa would get shit, from legit dieticians employed by the VA, about needing to control his diabetes with diet and exercise so he could get off insulin.
Dude was diabetic because he lost his pancreas in the same car accident his first wife died in. No amount of diet and exercise was going to make him sprout up a new pancreas.
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u/Jane9812 1d ago
The medical establishment is broadly extremely cruel about diabetes education, stemming from stereotyping. I'm sorry to hear that happened to him.
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u/Evamione 2d ago
My dad is the opposite. Fat (though not sedentary) for fifty years now; eats a mix of some healthy stuff and a lot of cake/donuts/cookies with a good measure of beer mixed in too. Not diabetic, not even pre diabetic. His cousins are all bigger people like him and none of them are diabetic either; neither was anyone in his parents generation. He ends up correcting new doctors who assume he must be diabetic. He says except for the heavy smokers in his parents generation, who stayed at normal weights because of the smoking until they quit in the eighties and then got fat, all of his family becomes fat by thirty but no one gets diabetes.
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u/cinderparty 1d ago
My mom is like that. She’s morbidly obese, has been since I was a little kid (I’m 45)…but her a1c is great, her blood pressure is great, her cholesterol levels are great. It’s weird. My grandma was obese til she died, like 2 months before she turned 93, and never developed diabetes either, so I guess genetics.
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u/Evamione 1d ago
Yeah, we can’t distinguish between when obese is the normal weight for a person and unlikely to cause problems and when it’s not. We have some portraits from the 1700s of his family, and even then, all notably fat.
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u/floccinaucinili 2d ago
Thanks , now I understand why I had to do the GD test despite my disclaimer that my relative’s diabetes was avoidable(due to ignoring doctors).
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u/Evamione 2d ago
All pregnant women do the one hour screen at 27 weeks here. I had to do the test each pregnancy, even though none of my relatives (no grandparents, not even one of the dozen cousins of either of my parents, all now in their late 60s/70s) developed type 2 diabetes, despite all but three of those thirty some people having at least level one obesity from at least their thirties. My dad is the forty year cake eater who still has healthy fasting sugar and A1C numbers, not even borderline to the continual surprise of his doctors who assume a man in his seventies who’s been fat for fifty years must also be diabetic. And I’ve passed the screening by a mile in each of my previous four pregnancies. My doctor did go along with letting me skip the extra screen at ten weeks (which would normally be recommended based on me being fat) but I knew I couldn’t keep sweet stuff down anyway and he agreed that despite my size, my diabetes odds are low.
I think weight prejudice shows in what gets researched around type 2 and gestational diabetes. I think many people are comforted by the thought that if lifestyle alone causes the disease, they can control it and avoid it. Also, they don’t have to have as much sympathy for those with it if you think it was caused by their choices. And that’s without even addressing the question of how much weight is choice and how much it’s genetic itself.
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u/floccinaucinili 1d ago
I can’t imagine a test at 10 weeks. I would be vomiting everywhere if fasting in the first trimester! Routine testing seems sensible though.
Just bear in mind, that smoking is also a significant risk factor and modifiable(with help). https://ash.org.uk/resources/view/smoking-and-diabetes The person in my family with diabetes was a chain smoker although as he started at 8 years (and then it was acceptable) it wasnt really his fault he was addicted. Genetically, he did well to get to the age he did before developing problems(60s). However giving up smoking and modifying diet would’ve slowed/prevented the onset(his GP’s advice).
Regarding the NHs Advice, I thought it was widely accepted now that obesity has genetic, epigenetic and environmental components so not so much blaming choices. And it is just one factor that might increase risk, not definitely lead to diabetes. But then I did previously think it wasn’t at all genetic (and I wouldn’t know any better from the NHS link) so I do also see what you mean.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0026049518302257
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u/cinderparty 1d ago
Everyone, regardless of risk factors, gets the gestational diabetes testing, at least in Michigan and Colorado.
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u/cinderparty 2d ago
It’s also very genetic. Like you can be more predisposed to your lifestyle leading to type 2 diabetes. Though, also, some people with healthy lifestyles also end up as type 2 diabetics, this is just much much rarer than it is for those with unhealthy lifestyles…. Other things can cause it too. I had a great aunt who developed it due to chemo, back in the early 90s, and it was a known side effect of one of the chemo drugs she was on…I have no clue if that would have been permanent, she didn’t live long.
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u/short_cuppa_chai 2d ago
It's really unfair how it happens, too. I have so many risk factors for GDM (BMI, strong family history of T2D, ethnicity, geriatric pregnancy) and didn't develop it with my first pregnancy. I'm 25 weeks with my second baby and am still going strong with not developing it. And then there are tiny petite women with perfect lifestyles and no risk factors, and they get it. GDM is a bitch.
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u/cinderparty 2d ago
I found this, which seems to suggest the opposite, but more studies are needed.
The findings suggest that higher fruit consumption may reduce the risk of GDM, with a 3% reduction in the risk of GDM for every 100 g/d increase in fruit intake. Higher-quality prospective studies or randomized clinical trials are required to validate the effect of different variations of fruits, vegetables, and fruit juice consumption on the risk of GDM.- https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-023-00855-8
This one is about people already diagnosed with it, but the findings were that whole berries (and leafy greens) were beneficial.
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u/shecanreadd 1d ago
Anecdotally, I ate a ton of fruit during my pregnancy and did not develop GD. Despite other risk factors (age and BMI).
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u/SomeJoeSchmo 2d ago
The idea that the sugars in fruit leads to diabetes—gestational or otherwise—is simply not grounded in anything scientific. In fact, fruit consumption is protective, if anything. The carbophobia from the rise in popularity of low carb diets drives me crazy! Especially from medical professionals who ought to know better. Almost everyone should be eating MORE fruit, not less.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37214237/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3978819/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6231254/
There is a single study I have found that suggested a possible link in the second trimester, but many more suggesting fruit is protective, which falls more in line with other studies showing a benefit for both gestational and type 2 diabetes. Perhaps that single negative study has caused their concern?
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u/Grkipo 2d ago
That's not, just no. It has to do with your placenta hormones and body. Fasting number is the the one most correlated with negative outcomes, so maybe just don't eat fruit the night before to get the most accurate test.
This study from 2023 actually says opposite of what they suggested as well .
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-023-00855-8
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