Can I "beat" the 3 hour glucose test?

[art4heart]

I failed the one hour test, and am scheduled for the three hour test in a few days. Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of passing? I did not have gestational diabetes with my two other pregnancies, and also have a healthy diet with this one, so failing the first test surprised me. Thanks, mamas!

[Jenne]

Ideas:
Refuse the 3 hour and talk with your care provider about using a glucometer to track your blood sugar for 2 weeks.

Instead of sitting in the waiting area get up and walk the whole time. Exercise helps to use up the glucose.

Ask if you can take the "breakfast" test instead. If you search on here there should be a thread. I believe it is 1 egg, 1 piece of toast, 1 glass of OJ.

Good luck!
Jenne

[Lisa1970]

Don't eat any carbs in the last several hours prior. So, if the test is in the morning, cut off the carbs the night before.

[Lisa1970]

Oh yes, get exercise between takings of blood. That will lower your blood sugar.

[MaerynPearl]

No clue but man I wish they gave everyone the breakfast test. I had to do it and passed without question!

[Magali]

Originally Posted by art4heart

I failed the one hour test, and am scheduled for the three hour test in a few days. Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of passing? I did not have gestational diabetes with my two other pregnancies, and also have a healthy diet with this one, so failing the first test surprised me. Thanks, mamas!

Is there a reason you *must* take it? I mean if you want to cheat it doesn't sound like it has much value as a test to you. It doesn't for me, and I didn't do any GD testing this pg.

[fancyoats]

if you can, eat something high in protein and fiber (but low in carbs -- something like two eggs and half an avocado) right before you walk in the door.

[WifeofAnt]

Either take it honestly or don't take it at all, that's my opinion.

[art4heart]

I do not want to "cheat" the test. Like I said, I have a healthy diet and lifestyle, no history of GD with my other pregnancies, so failing the one hour test was a surprise. If I do have GD, then so be it and I'm thankful the test caught it. However, if the results of the one hour test were a fluke that could be prevented then I'd like to not repeat it for the three hour test.

[umsami]

OK, this is coming from somebody who has had insulin-dependent gestational diabetes for three pregnancies....and type 2 for the fourth (didn't resolve after last pregnancy).

The goal is not to beat it. The goal is to determine if you truly have gestational diabetes so that you can do everything possible to have a healthy baby and healthy pregnancy. While there is some debate about diet-controlled gestational diabetes being real or not... if you do develop GD that requires medication (glyburide usually) or insulin...then you do have a condition that can lead to a host of negative outcomes--including an increased risk of stillbirth.

One thing you can do (and many OBs are OK with this) is ask if you can borrow a blood glucose monitor (or buy one at Wal-Mart...ReliOn Brand is $9.00)...and monitor your daily fasting and 2 hour post-prandial (post-meal) blood sugars. Do this for a week. That will give your practitioner a much more accurate picture of whether you truly have GD--rather than downing a bunch of pure glucose which isn't the way anybody eats.

If your practioner is not OK with that, then:
1) Eat a high-protein, high fat, zero carb breakfast. Drink plenty of water.
2) Some people recommend carb-loading three days before the test. You can do this with more healthful carbs--it doesn't have to be pure sugar.
3) Walk/move as much as you can during the test. If you're having it done at a lab, such as Quest or LabCorp, often times they will want you to sit in a chair for the entire three hours.... some even have rooms for all the GTT tests. Do what you can to move around... even if it's just going to the bathroom.

People who have GD, do not necessarily have unhealthful diets... are overweight... or had a previous pregnancy with GD. (Although once you have one pregnancy with GD, you have increased risk in future pregnancies.) It has to do with the hormones the placenta produces interfering with blood glucose management.

[MaerynPearl]

Originally Posted by umsami

3) Walk/move as much as you can during the test. If you're having it done at a lab, such as Quest or LabCorp, often times they will want you to sit in a chair for the entire three hours.... some even have rooms for all the GTT tests. Do what you can to move around... even if it's just going to the bathroom.

I have seen ladies tell them they are feeling sick and ask if they can go out to get fresh air, then walk around outside for a while.

[babygirlie]

Yup, you are not suppose to idly walk around during the 3 hours. So people will go for a jog/walk to "beat it".

I would take it honestly imo because you don't want to risk your baby's health. Cheating it will not help you health wise. If you don't want to take it or don't believe in it just don't take it. If you want to kn ow honestly then I don't understand why you want to cheat. Just because you had 2 easy pregnancies doesn't mean it will be the same as the third.

[Liora]

I completely understand the desire to "cheat" this completely bogus test. I had GD with my last pregnancy since I failed the 1 hour and the 3 hour horrifically. So they put me on a restricted diet and I had to take my blood glucose levels 4 times a day.

I never changed the way I eat at all (I was eating very healthy anyways) and I NEVER had a bad glucose reading. That test with its crazy pure sugar on a fasting stomach is just absurd.

So why cheat? Well being labeled with GD almost got me kicked from midwives to ob. I had to have (needless) non-stress tests, monitoring during labor, and was unable to labor in the water. I also had a "deadline" for delivery or they would induce me. It robbed me of a lot of choice in my childbirth. If I thought I had actual GD then ok, but I absolutely did not.

No doubt if you have ACTUAL GD then you'd want to know. So, I'd recommend trying a meter to see if your sugar levels are actually elevated. But, considering lots of practices won't let you do a breakfast test I am definitely going to try to cheat the test.

[rlandnl]

Originally Posted by Liora

I completely understand the desire to "cheat" this completely bogus test. I had GD with my last pregnancy since I failed the 1 hour and the 3 hour horrifically. So they put me on a restricted diet and I had to take my blood glucose levels 4 times a day.

I never changed the way I eat at all (I was eating very healthy anyways) and I NEVER had a bad glucose reading. That test with its crazy pure sugar on a fasting stomach is just absurd.

So why cheat? Well being labeled with GD almost got me kicked from midwives to ob. I had to have (needless) non-stress tests, monitoring during labor, and was unable to labor in the water. I also had a "deadline" for delivery or they would induce me. It robbed me of a lot of choice in my childbirth. If I thought I had actual GD then ok, but I absolutely did not.

No doubt if you have ACTUAL GD then you'd want to know. So, I'd recommend trying a meter to see if your sugar levels are actually elevated. But, considering lots of practices won't let you do a breakfast test I am definitely going to try to cheat the test.

I would have to agree with this.

With my first pregnancy I had insulin dependent GD. Before I got pregnant this time I was seeing an endocrinologist for isulin resistance related to PCOS. I was on metformin. I because very unexpectedly and happily pregnant. I have continued seeing her throughout this pregnancy. I took a 2 hour GTT when I was around 12 or 13 weeks pregnant I can't remember now, and passed with flying colors. Still she wanted me monitoring my sugars 4X a day and emailing them to her weekly.

I was told if my numbers got bad or a failed the 3 hour at 28 weeks it would be automatic insulin, which brings all sorts of other automatic interventions. So I refused the 28 week test. I was already monitoring 4X a day and I felt that as long as I could control the numbers myself with altering diet where I needed to, why should I put my body through the test, and put my body through the insulin, because I am pretty sure I would have failed the 3 hour, putting all that pure sugar into me, no water allowed, no moving... yeah not typical of my normal eating habits.

So I have eaten "mostly" whatever I wanted, and for the most part have had good numbers. My fastings have been on the higher side many times, but the endo is ok with that since they are just slightly elevated and it's not every day, (they are between 95 and 105 a lot, her cut off is 95) and my after meals are only ever elevated when I eat something I shouldn't- like 3 pieces of pizza last night.

I do still take my metformin, and my OB treats me similar to how she would a GD person, because of the metformin, and the refused 3 hour. So I have had more ultrasounds, and I am having an induction at 39w4d but I have avoided daily needle sticks, NSTs, an earlier induction (last one was at 38 weeks). I feel better having controlled it (GD or not who knows, my endo says I do not have it looking at my numbers which is good but also a lot of that could be me eating "right") with diet.

So did I "cheat" the system by starting controlling my diet early, and refusing the test? maybe. Do I "cheat" by eating crap sometimes when my sugar is on the lower side, and purposely waiting till I don't have to test my sugar for a while? yep. but my A1C is 5.0 and 5.4 so far this pregnancy, and like my endo says it's more the AVERAGE of your glucose numbers that matter rather than highs here and there.

[MarineWife]

Originally Posted by Jenne

Refuse the 3 hour and talk with your care provider about using a glucometer to track your blood sugar for 2 weeks.

Ask if you can take the "breakfast" test instead. If you search on here there should be a thread. I believe it is 1 egg, 1 piece of toast, 1 glass of OJ.

This is what I did when I was pg with ds3. I refused the 3 hour and just came in for blood draws after having a normal breakfast. My blood sugars were fine. I had an uneventful pg and my baby was fine. This was after I had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes when I was pg with ds2.

I agree that the test is questionable. I think knowing what your blood sugars are from eating a normal, healthy diet is much more important. When I was diagnosed with GD with ds2 I was not allowed to see the midwives at the military hospital anymore. I had to go to the high risk OB clinic. I did not have a choice other than UC, I guess, but I didn't know about that at the time. No homebirth midwives would take me because I had had a previous c-section.

[karmab]

i dont know. for every story like liora's, there's another mama with undiagnosed gd and a stillborn, or a big bad baby in nicu- and they can be worse than the tiny ones, or a birth defect like sacral agenesis ,although some of that is from diabetes poorly controlled very early on. still, diabetes in pregnancy, even mild carbohydrate metabolism issues that dont even meet the criteria of gd (like 1 elevated result on the 3 hr gtt) can have serious consequences. personally i think every mom to be should follow an ada diet whether they have gd or not. but if you have it, that's something you need to know.

[rlandnl]

Originally Posted by karmab

i dont know. for every story like liora's, there's another mama with undiagnosed gd and a stillborn, or a big bad baby in nicu- and they can be worse than the tiny ones, or a birth defect like sacral agenesis ,although some of that is from diabetes poorly controlled very early on. still, diabetes in pregnancy, even mild carbohydrate metabolism issues that dont even meet the criteria of gd (like 1 elevated result on the 3 hr gtt) can have serious consequences. personally i think every mom to be should follow an ada diet whether they have gd or not. but if you have it, that's something you need to know.

I don't disagree that uncontrolled GD or diabetes in general being bad, but I also have to say that someone without true GD but a bad 3 hour test could be forced into meds and/or interventions that they otherwise wouldn't want/have. in my opinion the 3 hour test does not mimick real life. It's very uncommon to drink straight sugar 100grams and nothing else on an empty, and sit without moving and not drinking anything for 3 hours. Your body is of course going to go nuts with that.

for example, I am pretty sure I would fail a 3 hour test, and yes I have some bad numbers, but today, I was craving a milkshake, and i was starving, We were out my choices were limited, so I stopped at burger king (gag I normall hate them but my other choice was dunkin donuts) and got a whopper jr and a small vanilla milkshake. Ate both of those and tested 2 hours later on a whim just to see how "bad" it would be. My number was 103. So if you ask me I don't have true GD, I just am sensitive to carbs at certain times, under certain circumstances. Should I be on insulin or something else? I don't think so and obviously neither does my endocrinologist.

[nashvillemidwife]

Originally Posted by art4heart

I do not want to "cheat" the test. Like I said, I have a healthy diet and lifestyle, no history of GD with my other pregnancies, so failing the one hour test was a surprise. If I do have GD, then so be it and I'm thankful the test caught it. However, if the results of the one hour test were a fluke that could be prevented then I'd like to not repeat it for the three hour test.

If the one hour test were a fluke it won't be repeated. The one hour test is a screening test, which only tells you if you're at high risk of developing diabetes. The three hour test is a diagnostic test, which tells you whether or not you have diabetes. You can stop worrying about "messing up" the test.

[taffywelsh]

Originally Posted by nashvillemidwife

If the one hour test were a fluke it won't be repeated. The one hour test is a screening test, which only tells you if you're at high risk of developing diabetes. The three hour test is a diagnostic test, which tells you whether or not you have diabetes. You can stop worrying about "messing up" the test.

that sounds right. What I was told is that the one-hour test is much less accurate, and no matter what you do, if you really have diabetes, the 3-hr will tell you so. Go ahead and eat only protein the night before, drink lots of water, walk around during it...you can't cheat it. You can just help your body process the orange drink more normally.
This happened to me: flunked the 1-hr dramatically, passed the 3-hr no problem. I did do the above mentioned things, but only because I had been told that real diabetes can't hide, and if I truly had it they would find out. I just wanted to give my body a fighting chance.

[karmab]

Originally Posted by rlandnl

My number was 103. So if you ask me I don't have true GD, I just am sensitive to carbs at certain times, under certain circumstances. Should I be on insulin or something else? I don't think so and obviously neither does my endocrinologist.

i hear ya, but you wouldnt be on insulin, because insulin in pg is done on a sliding scale. you would test your fasting and your postprandials and have a scale that determines your insulin. at 103 post prandial, you wouldnt take any. but if you found yourself in one of those situations where your sugar was high for whatever reason, you could treat it. and you would only be put on insulin if your 3 hr gtt was waaay out of whack- that's not a fluke. if your result was borderline, you would be diet controlled.