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Know your risk of type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes occurs when your body
doesn’t produce enough insulin, or the body’s cells don’t react to insulin. This is known as insulin resistance. If you’re diagnosed with diabetes, you may be able to control or even reverse your symptoms simply by eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and monitoring your blood glucose levels. However, as diabetes is a progressive condition, you may eventually need medication, usually in the form of tablets. Diabetes is often associated with obesity. Obesity-relate diabetes is sometimes referred to as maturity-onset diabetes because it’s more common in older people.

During pregnancy, some women have such high levels of blood glucose that their body is unable to produce
enough insulin to absorb it all. This is known as gestational diabetes and affects up to 18 in 100 women during pregnancy. Pregnancy can also make existing type 1 diabetes worse. Gestational diabetes can increase the risk of health problems developing in an unborn baby, so it’s important to keep your blood glucose levels under control. In most cases, gestational diabetes develops during the second trimester of pregnancy (weeks 14 to 26) and disappears after the baby is born. However, women who have gestational diabetes are at an increased risk (30%) of developing diabetes later in life (compared with a 10% risk for the general population).