I am trying to read up on suitability of low carb diet and pregnancy. Haven't found much information exept cautioning against using low carb diet (though need to define what low carb actually is).
I want to minimise the insulin as much as possible (to avoid lows) and was thinking that low carb might be the way to go.
But how low carb is suitable for pregnancy? And how much carb would be 'lower carb" for this situation?
My doctor was concerned about ketosis. But surely that doesn't happen (even with weight loss) unless it's extreme low carb.
Those are great questions. I’ll do some research also to see if I can find anything. There are a lot of low carb forums, though most aren’t geared towards diabetics.
You could try asking these questions of Dr. Bernstein during his monthly web casts. It’s a Q&A format. You can sign up at www.diabetesincontrol.com.
It’s quite likely no-one has researched this question. After all there isn’t likely to be a profit in it. However, Dr. Lois Jovanovic is an expert in care of diabetic mothers and I know she advocates low carbs. Search out some of her work. I’m far too old to be having babies[I’m a Grandma!:o) ], but i am a huge Lois Jovanovic fan.
Hana
Ps she’s in California, so you might be in the right place to get to see her.
You could contact dr. jay Wortman whose wife ate low carb while pregnant and they continue not to feed any sugars even now after the birth. He is a big low carb proponent and has helped Canadian native populations with their high rate of type 2 diabetes using a more native and therefore lower carb diet. BBC did a show on it in fact.
Here are two of his blog posts where he references the pregnancy or babies using low carb – he may have done research on this subject as well:
www.diabetesincontrol.com has transcripts (or replays), but I believe they charge for access to them. No charge to view the web cast live. Hope your questions are answered!
I was again reminded of Jay Wortman’s wife (see links above) and one thing I noticed in your post was there weren’t any fats mentioned. What do you guess your fat consumption is as a percent of total–mine is around 50%-60% of my total daily calories. Especially with pregnancy I would make sure you are getting loads of good fats–I really like Mary Enig’s writtings on fats.
