Speaking about health before pregnancy, we mean way of life, nutrition, physical activity, habits, and also possible chronic diseases, such as heightened blood pressure or diabetes. If you have such diseases, then you just have to visit a doctor beforehand. You know, this may complicate pregnancy, bring harm to an unborn baby. Tell your doctor which medicinal preparations and in which doses you take. Doctor will recommend you tests and observations you should pass, for example, X-ray photography.

Diabetes
Diabetes – it is a disease, appearing as a result of lack of insulin in organism, this hormone is produced by pancreas. Moreover, diabetes can influence passing of pregnancy seriously. Secondly, women suffering from diabetes can give birth to babies with inborn defects.

You can reduce risk of such complications due to constant control of sugar content in blood during pregnancy. If you don’t care of your state, then diabetes while pregnancy may turn out to be dangerous both for you and your future baby. Majority of complications, connected with diabetes, are displayed during first trimester, i.e. during first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Pregnancy may cause complications of state while diabetes, what will require increase of insulin doses. Majority of doctors recommend taking a special care of this disease development during at least 2-3 months before conception. This will help to reduce probability of risk of miscarriage or other problems. Probably, you will have to pass tests on sugar content in blood several times per day, to control disease completely and avoid possible complications. Past experience shows that women, suffering from diabetes, had serious problems with conception and passing of pregnancy. But die to complete and constant control even women-diabetics can count on successful result of pregnancy and delivery.

If in your family there were cases of diabetes or you have slightest suspicions as for your own health, pass tests before pregnancy surely.

Asthma
About 1% of pregnant women suffer from asthma. It is impossible to predict influence of pregnancy on asthma. Half of women, suffering from this disease, notice no changes during pregnancy, about 25% feel even slight improvement, and the rest (25%) observe worsening of state.

Majority of anti-asthma remedies are safe for pregnant, but it is still better to consult a doctor as for preparation to take. Almost all who suffer from asthma know what may become a reason of fit, so avoid contact with allergens before getting pregnant and during whole pregnancy. Try to control your state yet before pregnancy.

Hypertension
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can cause complication both of mother’s and unborn baby’s health. For women it is connected with risk of refusal of kidneys work, probability of hypertensic crisis or headache. Increase of a future mother’s blood pressure may become a reason for decrease of blood inflow to placenta, what will lead to delays of fetus development, i.e. a baby will weigh less, than normal while birth.

If you had high blood pressure before pregnancy, then you just have to take care of it during all 9 months. Probably, gynaecologist will send you to therapeutist’s or family doctor’s observation with this purpose.

Before making a decision to become pregnant, women, suffering from hypertension, should consult a doctor. Some remedies against high blood pressure are safe for pregnant, some are not. On no account quit taking pills and reduce dose without a doctor’s prescription! If you plan giving birth to a baby, ask you doctor about remedies you are taking against high blood pressure, and about safety of taking these medicines during pregnancy.

Heart diseases
During pregnancy load on heart increases about 50%. Some heart diseases, such as mitral valve prolapse, can seriously complicate passing of pregnancy. Other heart diseases, such as inborn heart disease, may seriously influence state of health. In this case pregnancy and delivery are sometimes contra-indicated.

Consult your doctor as for heart diseases before you become pregnant.

Kidneys and urinary bladder diseases
Infections of urinary system, in particular urinary bladder, often appear during pregnancy. If you don’t cure disease in time, infection may pass to kidneys, causing pyelonephritis.

Infections of urinary bladder and pyelonephritis may lead to premature birth. If you ever suffered from pyelonephritis or repeating infections of urinary system, this should be determined before pregnancy.

Stones in kidneys also may complicate passing of pregnancy. Moreover, stones in kidneys may become a reason of appearance of infections of urinary system and pyelonephritis.

Thyroid gland diseases
Thyroid gland diseases may appear both because of excess or lack of thyroid hormone. Excess of hormone is called thyrotoxicosis. In this case metabolism in human organism is speeded up. Thyrotoxicosis is usually cured with help of operation of medicinal remedies, reducing content of thyroid hormone in organism. If you don’t cure this disease, there’s rather high level of risk premature birth and giving birth to a baby with low weight.

You can carry our treatment during pregnancy too: there’re quite safe preparations, which pregnant women may take.

Lack of thyroid hormone – hypothyroidism – is usually caused by disease of autoimmune origin. In this case thyroid gland is damaged by anti-bodies, which are produced by your organism. Not cured hypothyroidism threatens with sterility or habitual noncarrying of pregnancy.

If you have thyrotoxicosis or hypothyroidism, you need to pass through observation before pregnancy, to determine doses of medicinal remedies, necessary for treatment. In the process of pregnancy your necessity in preparations may change, and then you will have to pass another observation.

Anemia
Anemia means that there’s lack of haemoglobin in your organism. There’re several reasons and in connection with this several kinds of anemia. Symptoms of anemia are weakness, giddiness, lack of air and pale skin.

During pregnancy necessity of organism in iron and iron-containing substances increases. If in the beginning of pregnancy you suffer from lack of iron in blood, anemia increases this lack. One of specific types of anemia - sicle-cell disease, which is passed genetically: it is mainly spread among black population. If you suffer from sicle-cell disease, your organism is deprived of oxygen. Passing of this kind of anemia can be very painful, and it also may serve as a reason for other diseases and complications during pregnancy. Sicle-cell disease cannot be cured and may be passed to your baby. Women, suffering from sicle-cell disease, have very high percent of miscarriages and infections of urinary system. They also may suffer from high blood pressure and painful hypertension strokes.

If some of your relatives suffers from thalassanemia or you suppose you can have it, check it before pregnancy.

Lupus
Lupus is a vascular disease of autoimmune origin. This means your organism produces anti-bodies that may destroy your organs or influence functions of these organs negatively. Lupus can affect different organs, including joints, kidneys, lungs and heart.

This disease is hard to diagnose. As a rule, lupus more often strikes women, than men, especially women of genital age, i.e. from 20 to 40 years.

Lupus treatment is highly individual and usually means taking if steroids. It is better not to become pregnant during fit of this disease, as miscarriages are extremely often among women suffering from lupus. Risk of giving birth to a dead baby also increases.

Babies, born from mothers, suffering from lupus, can have rash. They also can have different heart diseases. Premature birth and delay of pre-natal development of fetus are also quite possible.

If you suffer from lupus, consult your doctor before pregnancy definitely.

Epilepsy and epileptic seizures
Epilepsy – is a chronic disease, characterized by different kinds of seizures (fits). Chance of giving birth to a baby with epileptic disease can be 1 of 30 for women, suffering from epilepsy. Such babies have risk of in-born diseases, probably, connected with medicines, which a future mother took during pregnancy.

If you take medicines against epilepsy, it is very important to consult your doctor before pregnancy. Discuss doses and type of medicines, which you take, as many preparations, relieving seizures of epilepsy, cause in-born diseases in babies. Seizures can be dangerous both for mother and fetus. So it is especially important to take remedies precisely according to a doctor’s prescription during pregnancy. On no account reduce dose or quit taking medicine yourself, without a doctor!

Migraine
About 15-20% of all pregnant women suffer from migraine. Many women notice improvement of health during pregnancy. If you are going to take pills against headache during pregnancy, check with your doctor how much they are safe for you and future baby.

Cancerous growths
A question of probability of cancer’s influence on pregnancy depends on the fact which organ it stroke and how wide is growth. Breast cancer is most often form of cancer, met among women. If you had breast cancer, this will not influence pregnancy anyway, and pregnancy, in its turn, will not cause breast cancer.

Many doctors advice to wait 2-3 years with childbirth after breast cancer treatment. It is very important to discuss case history and method of treatment with your doctor yet before pregnancy. Situation may become quite complicated, if you are pregnant and pass treatment at the same time. Many medicines and remedies against cancer are not safe for future mother and baby.

Other diseases
We examined only some chronic diseases. However, any disease can be dangerous for future baby. So if you suffer from some chronic disease or have to take medicines constantly, discuss it with your doctor. Laying of all organs and tissues of a baby takes place during 1st trimester of pregnancy, and during this period you need to protect a future baby from harmful influences of medicines or observations. You will feel better and calmer, if you solve all these problems before pregnancy.

There is a war raging within our bodies every day. One the one side are environmental toxins that we breathe, drink and eat and on the other side are our bodies defense mechanisms that fight to keep us healthy. There are ‘natural toxins’ all over our environment. Things like disease causing germs, radon gas and other natural contaminants that get into our food, water and the air we breathe. This is no reason to get alarmed. Our bodies defense systems just don’t adapt at the same rate. It is also problematic that the foods we eat have declined in nutritional quality. This puts us and our kids at greater risk since our bodies require this nutrition for ammunition against the environmental threats.

Casualty Report
When we think about things like hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) and adult - onset diabetes (type II diabetes), we don’t typically think of these as childhood illnesses. However, children are diagnosed with chronic illness more and more all the time. Some would argue that this is simply due to an improvement in early diagnosis techniques. While this is certainly a factor, it is undeniable that the rate of many chronic diseases is increasing in children and adults alike.

A large national study called the PDAY study (predeterminants of atherosclerosis in youth) actually showed that 1 in 5 high school age kids today, already have the beginning stages of atherosclerosis and the majority of youth have fatty streaks in their arteries. We must reverse these trends. Kids are not immune to chronic disease caused by poor lifestyle choices. I hear all the time “they’re just kids, they can handle it”. This is absolutely false. Lack of quality nutrition in our kids is allowing the slow accumulation of damage to mount up in their veins and organs until one day it hits a point where they are diagnosed with disease.

Chronic illnesses that will catch up to them in adulthood are not the only problems. There are many immediate threats as well. Poor nutrition is associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), asthma, eczema and behavioral problems. This is not to say that poor nutrition is the sole cause of all of these disorders but it can definitely contribute. In many cases, improved diet and quality nutritional supplementation can reverse or at least improve several childhood disorders and can prevent chronic illness in adulthood.

Oxidative Stress Threatens Your Children’s Future
One of the major on-going battles is to keep damage from oxidative stress at a minimum. Many experts now believe that damage due to oxidative stress underlies the cause of several chronic degenerative diseases. There are certainly other factors at work, like genetics, but oxidative stress appears to be a significant player.

What is oxidative stress? Oxygen is a double-edged sword. Without it, we cannot produce the high-energy demands of our physiology. But the highly reactive properties of oxygen that make it so useful also make it very dangerous.

We mostly use oxygen in a reaction to convert foods we eat into a useful energy molecule, called ATP, which is the primary fuel that our body uses. However, the process of using oxygen to make ATP actually release very damaging molecules called free radicals. These little suckers can actually rip through your cells and create tons of havoc, damaging all kinds of things including your DNA. This process is called ‘oxidative stress’ and if left unchecked can lead to all kinds of disease like cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease and lots more.

The damage caused by oxidative stress slowly accumulates until it is bad enough to cause disease. It really just depends on where the greatest damage happens that determines the type of disease. For example, oxidative damage in the eye can lead to macular degeneration; in the joints to arthritis; in the arteries to atherosclerosis. Oxidative stress will be more likely to get a foothold wherever you are genetically weakest. But the underlying molecular mechanisms of these varied disease can have a similar root cause – too much oxidative stress.

Anti-Oxidants to Your Children’s Rescue
Luckily, our bodies have ways to deal with oxidative stress. We have genes that have the specific job of ‘capturing’ these free radicals, before they wreak too much havoc, and minimize the damage. This defense mechanism is sometimes called our anti-oxidant system.

Many vitamins and plant-derived nutrients, like vitamin C and vitamin E also act as ‘anti-oxidants’ and help our bodies natural anti-oxidant systems keep free radicals under control. This is why it is so incredibly important to get enough of these nutrients into our bodies because without them damage from oxidative stress accumulates over time until it causes major health problems. The body’s own systems are not sufficient. We must arm them with anti-oxidant molecules from our diet and supplements to optimize our defenses.

Every time you allow your kids to eat poorly you allow a little damage and every time you encourage your kids to eat well you add a little protection to deal with or reverse the damage. If you continually tip the scales in favor of the damage, your kids will have a high probability of health problems.

What is Pre-diabetes?
This is a fact that before developing diabetes mellitus type 2, almost always that patient develops Pre-diabetes condition. In pre-diabetes, blood sugar levels are in higher limits, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes mellitus. In USA only, more than 54 million people have pre-diabetes condition.During pre-diabetes damage to heart and circulatory system may already be occuring.

Various studies have shown that if you control your pre-diabetes condition earlier, then there are very less chances to develop type 2 diabetes mellitus, or you can delay it to develop. So always try to manage your blood glucose under control limits when you are in pre-diabetic stage to prevent yourself from developing type 2 diabetes.

Do you have Pre-diabetes Condition, How to Tell?
There are two important tests that can tell you that you are having pre-diabetes condition. 1-The fasting plasma glucose test (FPG) 2: Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Fasting Plasma Glucose Test values for pre-diabetes are between 100mg/dl to 125mg/dl. If your glucose level is below 100mg/dl, then you have normal metabolism, if above 125mg/dl then you have Diabetes. It means if your level is between 100-125mg/dl, then you will have pre-diabetes.

In case of OGTT, if less than 140mg/dl, then normal, between 140-200mg/dl is pre-diabetic condition and above 200mg/dl is diabetic condition.

How you can prevent pre-diabetes?
Pre-diabetes can be very lethal to your health if you will not manage it seriously. Sooner or later you will probably have type 2 diabetes. You can also even get your glucose level within normal limits if you follow these 3 steps.
A: Change in your diet habit. Try to avoid sweets in your diet.
B: Half hour moderate exercise.
C: Weight reduction.

Just 30 minutes daily moderate physical activity or exercise, along with a 5-10% reduction in body weight, can produce a 58% reduction in diabetes

Who should get tested for pre-diabetes?
If you are not overweight and above 45, should consult your doctor. If you are below 45 and overweight, you should also check your fasting plasma glucose level.
If you are having normal blood glucose levels you should have FPG test every 3 years. If you have pre-diabetes, you should be checked for type 2 diabetes every year after your diagnosis of pre-diabetes.

Children pre-diabetes
Children have much less chances of developing pre-diabetes condition, however if they are very obese then one must think of pre-diabetes condition and get yourself be checked for pre-diabetes.

Glucosamine supplements are a popular remedy for arthritis pain relief, especially for osteoarthritis. Unlike NSAIDs and other anti-inflammatory drugs, the pain relief provided by glucosamine lasts even after a person is no longer taking the supplements. This is because glucosamine helps repair damaged cartilage in joints. There has been some concern that glucosamine might cause insulin resistance and that people with diabetes should not take glucosamine.

This concern is because of previous animal and human studies that found “giving glucosamine can impair insulin’s action, which can potentially make [people] diabetic or worsen diabetes.” This is according to Rajaram J. Karne, now of the Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

Most people take glucosamine orally, not by injection.

Karne and his collaborators in Bethesda, Md, at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, tested a commonly used dose of oral glucosamine in 20 normal weight and obese adults. The dose they tested was three 500-milligram pills of glucosamine daily or a placebo.

Unlike the high doses of injected glucosamine used in previous studies, this oral dose of glucosamine is what is normally recommended by health care professionals and what is most commonly used by folks taking glucosamine supplements.

Six weeks of glucosamine didn’t make any measurable difference in insulin’s action.

This study indicates that at least in adults who don’t already have diabetes, three 500-milligram glucosamine pills does not effect insulin resistance or cause diabetes.
This dose should be safe for those taking it for osteoarthritis pain relief.

If you are diabetic, finding the right balance of food can be hard. This article will cover the different foods you should eat and avoid when you have diabetes.

Food to Avoid
Avoid food high in sugar, honey and artificial sweeteners. Use an alternative sweetener like stevia. Foods High in sugar include sweets and chocolate. If you need the occasional piece of chocolate (like most of us!) then try to eat Continental dark chocolate with at-least 75% cocoa solids.

You should also avoid certain types of vegetables including beans, parsnips, carrots and peas.
You should also avoid fruits including banana, grapes, strawberries and mangoes.
Avoid types of grains including pasta, rice, barley, corn, wheat and rye and foods that contain ingredients that end in ol or ose.

Foods to Eat
Foods you should eat should be high in fibre. A high fibre diet is very important for diabetics. This includes cereals, nuts, fruits, seeds and certain vegetables. You should also eat fruits that include grapefruit, peaches, lime and apples. Eat fruit and vegetables gradually throughout the day so your blood sugar level won’t suddenly rise. You can also eat seafood of all types preferably boiled, steamed, baked or grilled – Not fried.

Eat white meats like chicken, fish and duck. Eggs are fine for diabetics but try to avoid the yolk. Cheeses are also fine apart from cottage cheese.

Consider this as being an illness just like any other such as diabetes. Don't be ashamed when you are going through a tough time and need help. The first part of healing a panic and anxiety disorder, is acknowledging that it is there and it needs to be addressed.

Try distraction. If you can take my mind off of the panic, you may do much better.

Breathe. REALLY, really, concentrate on your breathing. Say coping statements out loud, or to yourself, such as "I can do this" or I've had worse times than this before and come out of it OK, this is nothing. Remember what a BEAR panic and anxiety disorder is, then go into a fight mode. Don't let that BEAR hurt you anymore!

The thought of having a panic or anxiety attack can make your panic symptons flare up. It is your mind that needs to be stopped. Try to occupy yourself and ignore the bad thoughts. Thoughts are dangerous. Negative thinking is a big part of the problem.

Install a ceiling fan in your bedroom. Many of those suffering from panic and anxiety disorder report that one of the things that sets them off is a feeling of not getting enough air. A ceiling fan may help this feeling when it's not practical to open a window.

Try doing tai chi or chi gong daily. Many sufferers of panic and anxiety disorder have derived great relief by practicing these very gentle martial arts movements. They can be practiced anywhere at just about anytime. Do some research and find a good instructor.

As mentioned above, tai chi, chi gong, meditation, or yoga etc, can give you an overall feeling of relaxation. Losing the tension is a good first step. You can gain mental relaxation and control by challenging negative thinking patterns with positive ones.

Finally, when all else fails and you go into a panic attack, TAKE YOUR MEDICATION.. There's nothing wrong with taking the correct medication in the correct dose as prescribed by your doctor.

So you’ve learned that you’ve got diabetes. Well after the initial shock, you’re stuck with dealing with the lifestyle changes that come with your diagnosis. When you go into the situation knowing that this isn’t the end but only the beginning of a new phase in your life it gives you a better perspective on life. Oftentimes, folks feel a sense of relief when they finally realize what the problem is. The stress of uncertainty lifts and the realization sets in that their life is now on a straight path. Well sort of..

Of course your new lifestyle will demand a few changes. Depending on whether or not you have Type I or Type 2 diabetes you might even have to take insulin shots, ouch!! Relax, things are going to get only better now that your health is being managed correctly.

Your new diet will consist of many foods with lower carbohydrates, which can of course be a hassle if you are addicted to savories. Sure, there’s a downside, but your quality of life should go up immeasurably. A lower carb diet doesn’t exclude all of the things that you have come to love, just cautiously watching your diet will help. Moderation and constant inventory of what you are eating is essential to helping you maintain a healthy diet. After you’ve had to deal with the disease for awhile you’ll be a whiz at maintaining yourself. Foods that are high in protein such as meats and nuts will be your friends since the carbohydrate levels are very low. This isn’t to say that you should go on a “no carb” diet, management and moderation is the key.
All in all you should be in constant contact with your physician & nutritionist while you are still in the beginning phase of the disease.