Going gluten-free during pregnancy could reduce your child’s risk of diabetes

This is interesting.

A recent study suggests that going gluten-free during pregnancy can reduce your child's chances of developing diabetes. Danish scientists say they may have found a link between gluten and the medical condition. Diabetes is a condition in which the body’s ability to produce the hormone insulin is impaired, resulting in the abnormal metabolising of carbohydrates and elevated levels of glucose in the blood, so it's easy to see where the idea for this study came from. The study, which examined data on more than 63,000 pregnant women from Denmark, found that eating a lot of gluten, commonly found in foods such as bread, pasta and cereal, can double the chances of your child developing diabetes later in life, compared to eating little or no gluten. Some older studies have shown that animals who have had a gluten-free maternal diet during pregnancy almost completely prevented type 1 diabetes among offspring. Of course, there are many differences between human bodies and those of animals but experts believe the same diet could work for pregnant women. Diabetes is one of the most common chronic ailments in Ireland so it will be interesting to see if this theory, when put into practice, actually works.