Bacon, Eggs, and Gestational Diabetes During Pregnancy
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DESCRIPTION: Eating meat or eggs before pregnancy may increase the risk of gestational diabetes.
I recently covered eggs and regular (type 2) diabetes in my video Eggs and Diabetes ( ).
More on advanced glycation end products in Glycotoxins ( ) and Avoiding a Sugary Grave ( ).
The heme iron in animal products is one of the toxic components the meat industry is trying to develop strategies to mediate. See Meat Additives to Diminish Toxicity ( ). More on heme versus nonheme iron in Risk Associated With Iron Supplements ( ).
What else has the Harvard Nurses Health Study shown us? See:
• Harvard's Meat and Mortality Studies ( )
• Breast Cancer and Alcohol: How Much is Safe? ( )
• What Women Should Eat to Live Longer ( )
For other cautionary pregnancy tales, see:
• Chamomile Tea May Not Be Safe During Pregnancy ( )
• What About the Caffeine? ( )
• Is Licorice Good For You? ( )
• Iron During Pregnancy ( )
• Maternal Mercury Levels ( )
• Pregnant Vegans at Risk for Iodine Deficiency ( )
• American Vegans Placing Babies at Risk ( )
• Chicken Consumption and the Feminization of Male Genitalia ( )
Have a question for Dr. Greger about this video? Leave it in the comment section at and he'll try to answer it!
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I personally know two mothers who have had LCHF/Paleo pregnancies and were healthier and had no complications than regular SAD diet pregnancies. How do you explain this? I consider this “broscience”. They both had daughters who are happy, healthy and the most well adjusted kids you’ve ever met!
“How do you explain this?” Lucky breaks? It’s great that the two mothers you know did well on LCHF pregnancies, but they do not a statistic make.
What does “Paleo” even mean? Was it authentic paleo: subsistence, catch-as-can-can scavenging, or the First World version of unprocessed meat and farmed fish, and lots of green vegetables? Was it a nutritional improvement on what these women were already eating, or no? It would be interesting to me, as a plant eater, to see actual science on some sort of codified Paleo regimen and pregnancy, or athletic recovery, but I daresay a codified Paleo regimen will never be agreed upon by real researchers. Whereas, we all know more or less what a whole food based vegan diet looks like, by its omissions, which makes it easier to study.
Some smokers will not develop lung cancer,does that mean you should start smoking??
In the science of reasoning (logic), making a generalization based on two cases is called hasty generalization. Ironically, your own post incorrectly characterizing carefully conducted epidemiological research as ‘broscience’ is itself an excellent example of broscience!
Touche! How will I ever recover, being insulted by a stranger on the internet?! 😛
Mathieu Gagné This theory is unsubstianted by evidence yet. Prove it please.
Specifically you could run a trial that has diet modification differing only in one component (controlled diet with grains and sugar or without those components), like those mediterranean diet folks did – and shown that really only nuts and olive oil are important in it with regards to CHD.
Similar could be done with your idea.
hi doc, a month ago I became a vegan and my blood pressure dropped to 110/70 is that normal ?
Yes your blood pressure is normal. Abnormal bp is anything over 120/80
Yes, it’s common for high blood pressure to drop after changing over to a vegan diet. That’s why the saying goes, let your food be your medicine.
seygra20 .
120 is fine. 130 is high.
In fact slightly lower blood pressure than considered normal (bottom end of the norm) is correlated with lower CHD risk. (And therefore general risk of death.)
omuleanu > my blood pressure dropped to 110/70
Your heart thanks you with every beat 🙂
Good to know. Interesting findings on such a serious issue. So many factors at play, I look forward to seeing more studies on this subject along the way.
The nutritionist in the hospital told my pregnant wife to eat eggs, meat and fish and drink milk to get her calcium. Also a maximum of two small apples or clementines per day as fruit. But keep some hours between the 2 apples otherwise you will get gestational diabetes she said!
Austria, Europe, 2014 and not doing a thing of what our nutritionist is telling us 😉
Yes, nutritionists read books and not studies, at least most of them. And the books tend to be really outdated, almost criminally.
The hospital is brain washed. Look at the Ensure American hospitals like to provide to patients. The stuff is terrible for us
Someone should explain to Dr Greger that:
1) Correlation is NOT causation, and that epidemiology alone (as in the Harvard Nurses’ Study) cannot provide any evidence in favour of a given hypothesis. At best, it can provide indications of future directions for research.
2) Data can be made to say anything if it is tortured sufficiently; the data in most of these “studies” has been wrung dry over and over again, and endless subgroup analysis is an extreme example of data torture, which should be made illegal under the Geneva Convention.
1) Epidemiology alone *can* provide evidence in favour of an epidemiological hypothesis. The hypothesis such as: plant-based diet cause health. Or more specific: plant-based diets cause cardiovascular health.
Showing that they are correlated with health is direct proof (strength depends on other factors), but doesn’t elucidate the mechanism by which they do it or the dose/response curve.
Especially if you control for confounders such as excercise, health-consciousness, wealth, education, which any reasonable study does.
However, there have been other (granted, not as large) studies that do show dose/response curves.
Specifically constructed studies with good design are of course more specific and have higher power, but it’s hard to run them with large numbers of patients, reducing power again.
2) Yes, of course, but stratification by intake is not an example of data torturing, especially if it has been shown by studies which were specifically made to look into that. Your point is invalid in general, might be valid with regards to a given study.
(Say, using results of a general epidemiological study to conclude that specifically nuts are correlated with health, when other plants show similar correlation, without proper statistical analysis.)
Dr Greger sometimes does post weak studies though, but there are enough strong ones for a decision.
That’s very nice of you to be so considerate to Dr Greger, but unfortunately your consideration has gone far beyond science. For example, exactly the same methods prove that eating ice-cream causes death by shark-bite.
anarchie76
Do they?
Do you actually have a control group? Large enough sample? (Both are critical.)
Ran a proper statistical analysis, including effect size and risk ratio?
Is there a dose response there?
Can I get raw results from you? (This last part is hard for most studies for some reason.)
Can I spot any silly manipulation there, like charts with moved zero axis to emphasize your point or excessive use of interpolation or esp. extrapolation?
Also, these studies are as often prospective – a change in diet is done and later epidemiology is involved to see what happened.
And the most important part of science is reproducibility. If we have many differently designed studies by different groups saying the same thing, it might actually be true.
Do you know what else contributes to GDM? Eating sugar and a reliance on grain products. Source good food no matter what you eat.
You know what contributes to silliness? Lack of science and proof. You seem to suffer from it.
(re: eating sugar and reliance on grain products. Whole grains are actually good and sugar, unless it dominates, seems neutral. The confounder in sugar is actually that high sugar contents are found in highly processed foods.)
What evidence is this claim based on?
Pubmed would be a good place to start.
I’m going to need an exact source still.
If cholesterol is a pregnancy issue, why does mother’s milk if full of cholesterol and saturated fat then?
Doctor, I LOVE YOUR videos, and I watch every single one of them, but this is way too much tendentious.
Smoke and Alcohol its a bad thing, but eggs causing diabetes I… I… I can’t see the connection. I a woman already has Diabetes what an egg would do to her?
Please, keep doing your videos, but as a nutrition studant, i’m gonna always question you when i believe you’re beeing extremist.
Cholesterol due to animal consumption.
Ha ha.
Cholesterolphobia… pretty scientific.
Cholesterol is made by the liver and the child needs more than it can make for healthy growth. Pregnant woman’s liver can easily ramp up the production to the summed needs unless the woman is malnourished.
Cholesterol is not bad per se, what seems to matter is the lipid form and density. Taken from diet often generates VLDL and LDL. (Though HDL too.) Native is mostly IDL and HDL.
So the source actually matters in this regard. Perhaps even liver not making cholesterol (since it is inhibited by dietary) is also causing problems in metabolism or tissue damage, as it is not as readily available in the liver itself.
Where has everybody been: Too much fat blocks insulin receptors from taking glucose from the blood – leading to prolonged high levels of blood glucose, which prolongs insulin production.
Because glucose can’t leave the bloodstream, the pancreas continues to create redundant insulin, leading to exhaustion of pancreas, and diabetes.
Too much is how much?
If you or someone you know is preparing for pregnancy, you won’t want to have missed this week’s video on avoiding gestational diabetes by avoiding meat and eggs: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/bacon-eggs-and-gestational-diabetes-during-pregnancy-2/
شو معنى البيضه وشكرا
what about just egg whites ? I cant seem to find anything that you have covered in regards to just egg whites ?
So why they tell pregnant woman to eat meat & eggs for protein ?
@Anayeli Ostorva did you need help ☝👆☝👆
Bel video!
you are an awesome dude don’t listen to all the haters they simply can’t live without dead corpses
Gah.. I was pretty good about eating plantbased before and then the food aversions hit during my pregnancy and I started eating meat and now I got gestational diabetes. Getting back on the wagon has been doable but difficult since a lot of the diet I’m following keto vegan trying to eat a lot of nuts and pea protein.
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@Ning Sanchez ppppppp
There’s a new study out on eggs and gestational diabetes. Could you make a video about that too?
Dr Tumba The spell caster is blessing to me thank for bringing back ex to me I really appreciate that alot
My blood sugar went so low during mumy second trimester
had sex during ovulation my ovulation ended Sept 2nd my period was due Sept 13th it didn’t come I did 4 preg test I did the last one on Sept 18 nd it was negative my breast are a little tender I’m peeing often and im sleepy I’m having pelvic cramps that feels like period cramps but they end in a few mins still no period and today is Sept 25th I’m scared to take another test and see negative…is there a possibility of me being prego?? I have regular 28 day periods every month .
That’s so cool of you baby Daddy
Love mommy