I am pregnant and my insulin resistance is going up and up. I now take at least twice as much and I 've four more months to go - apparantly I could need four times as much by the end. My doctor said that this is normal in all women, but in a non diabetic woman the pancreas just produces more and more insulin to cope with it, and this is what I am to try to do with my own insulin doses.
It got me thinking - why would the body do this? Why would it in a normal healthy woman become insulin resistant and then produce more insulin in order to prevent the blood sugar rising (obviously with gestational diabetes this doesn't happen as not enough insulin is produced to cope - but still that affects only 10% of pregnancies at most).
Then I got to thinking - many women gain weight in pregnancy which in olden times would have been to confer a survival advantage by ensuring the woman had fat supplies in time for when she had to produce enough food to feed two people rather than just herself. So if she can't get the energy she needs from food (which was hard enough for one person to do for themselves throughout most of history ) there are the reserves right there for when the baby is physically vulnerable to the effects of starvation and completely dependent on the mother for its food.
Insulin is referred to so often as the fat storage hormone so it makes sense that women in pregnancy produce more of it in order to store more fat.
I can't think of any other reason why a non diabetic woman would become insulin resistant during pregnancy, and this seems to be pretty universal to most pregnancies, although of course most women can produce enough insulin to cope with the resistance.
Anyone got any other ideas?
It got me thinking - why would the body do this? Why would it in a normal healthy woman become insulin resistant and then produce more insulin in order to prevent the blood sugar rising (obviously with gestational diabetes this doesn't happen as not enough insulin is produced to cope - but still that affects only 10% of pregnancies at most).
Then I got to thinking - many women gain weight in pregnancy which in olden times would have been to confer a survival advantage by ensuring the woman had fat supplies in time for when she had to produce enough food to feed two people rather than just herself. So if she can't get the energy she needs from food (which was hard enough for one person to do for themselves throughout most of history ) there are the reserves right there for when the baby is physically vulnerable to the effects of starvation and completely dependent on the mother for its food.
Insulin is referred to so often as the fat storage hormone so it makes sense that women in pregnancy produce more of it in order to store more fat.
I can't think of any other reason why a non diabetic woman would become insulin resistant during pregnancy, and this seems to be pretty universal to most pregnancies, although of course most women can produce enough insulin to cope with the resistance.
Anyone got any other ideas?
