Managing Blood Sugar + Gestational Diabetes with Casey Seiden, RDN, CDCES

Casey Seiden (1m 55s):

Balance is critical. Learning how to balance your sources of carbohydrate at your meals and your snacks with the other nutrients. So your fats, your proteins, and your fiber. We need to create that balance. And then the other aspect is gonna be kind of personalizing the portion size for you. So I can't sit here and say every pregnant person that I see is going to tolerate the same amount of carbohydrate at meal or at a snack. Through the glucose monitoring we're gonna learn what's a portion size that your body can personally handle.

Katie Ferraro (2m 51s):

Do you remember that super gross sugary drink that you had to swallow when you were pregnant in order to screen for gestational diabetes? Some of you might have blocked it out, but maybe some of you did have a diagnosis of gestational diabetes with a previous pregnancy or you're dealing with it now or it might be something that happens with future pregnancies. And it's scary because if your blood sugars are going haywire during pregnancy or even after there are serious medical complications. My guest today is Casey Seiden and she's a Registered Dietitian and a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist. That's the credential formerly known as the CDE or Certified Diabetes Educator. I'm also a dietitian. I am a CDCES as well. I previously worked in adult diabetes management a long time ago, whereas Casey is working exclusively with high risk OB patients, so pregnant and postpartum women who have or had gestational diabetes.

Katie Ferraro (3m 44s):

So Casey has a private practice. She's located in the New York, New Jersey area. She's a mom of two kiddos, Maddie, who's two and a half years old, and Paige, who's seven months. She is a baby-led weaning mom and Maddie took more to baby-led weaning is what Casey shared. She loved eating everything she still does, whereas her seven month old right now, Paige, she's like a little more timid and slower to take to self-feeding. Casey said she really loves breastfeeding, which is typical, right? It takes a lot of time for your baby to learn how to eat and don't be upset or feel stressed if they're not eating very much early on. It happens to everybody. Give yourself a lot of space and practice to let your baby learn how to eat. And in this episode, Casey is going to be answering a lot of questions about gestational diabetes and how you screen for it and manage it with diet and carbohydrates and spacing of carbs, et cetera.

Katie Ferraro (4m 30s):

But I also wanna let you know that Casey is hosting a masterclass for pregnant women with gestational diabetes and it's all about managing your fasting blood sugar. That's a really tough area for moms. And so she's gonna have this class that's gonna be taking place live on May 11th, 2023. I'll link the registration page for her fasting blood sugar masterclass in the description where you are listening to this podcast as well as the show notes. So if you have gestational diabetes or you have mom friends or colleagues who are pregnant and also have the diagnosis, please let them know about this masterclass on May 11th. I know I was just so blown away in this interview by Casey's depth of knowledge and her really uncanny ability to take complicated topics related to blood sugar management and convey them in straightforward, science-based terms that like we all can understand.

Katie Ferraro (5m 18s):

So I think you guys will love learning from Casey as well. Her masterclass, one more time, on managing fasting blood sugars during pregnancy held on May 11th sign up via the link in the description. And now with no further ado, I wanna introduce you to Casey Seiden, dietitian and diabetes educator who will be teaching us about managing blood sugar and gestational diabetes.

Casey Seiden (5m 43s):

Same. I'm excited to be here.

Katie Ferraro (5m 44s):

It's kind of picking your brain about your own kids and your personal life before we started, but tell us a little bit about your professional life. What's your background? How did you get involved working in diabetes and, in particular, gestational diabetes?

Casey Seiden (5m 56s):

Yes. So I became a dietitian, gosh it's been almost seven years ago now. And I originally started working out in the diabetes population but with older adults. So I worked in more low income communities doing a lot of pre-diabetes type two diabetes and all the comorbidities that came with that. So I worked there for about two and a half, almost three years. And then really the opportunity to start to work in the space that I'm in now, prenatal nutrition and gestational diabetes kind of just fell into my lap from a former coworker and I thought, okay, this is still diabetes related, but it's a totally different population. It's working all with women. I was actually also at the same time going through my own fertility journey and you know, women's health related issues.

Casey Seiden (6m 41s):

And so it all just kind of coalesced, took that job and fell in love with working with pregnant women, women trying to conceive while still helping them to manage their blood sugars. That was kind of the theme that was consistent across a lot of the women that I work with was blood sugar management.

Katie Ferraro (6m 56s):

So what was it that you love so much about working with that population? Like what sparked that like love for you?

Casey Seiden (7m 2s):

It's a very motivated population for the most part. Like they're coming to me.

Katie Ferraro (7m 7s):

That's a good point. Like I know we're not supposed to say non-compliant anymore, but like I just remember when I was in an adult nutrition and had private practice and was doing diabetes, like nobody listens to me.

Casey Seiden (7m 18s):

Yeah, I hate that word. Non-compliant. Yeah. But these-

Katie Ferraro (7m 20s):

I know, I know you're not allowed to use it, but like the opposite of non-compliance is like, oh they really like being here and listening to me.

Casey Seiden (7m 26s):

Yeah, they're highly motivated. So you know, they wanted to do the very best by themselves and and for their baby and I just thought pregnancy was such a cool time and it was something that I, at the time and twice now, could personally relate to with my clients not having diabetes or gestational diabetes, but being pregnant and going through all the changes and things that go along with that. It was just nice to kind of bond with women as a woman, you know, or pregnant people in that sense as well.

Katie Ferraro (7m 51s):

So some of our listeners might be familiar with like the term gestational diabetes in a nutshell. Like summarize it, what is gestational diabetes? How common is it?

Casey Seiden (7m 59s):

So gestational diabetes is a state of essentially carbohydrate intolerance where at the end of the second trimester started the third around that kind of 26, 28 week mark, your placenta will start to produce these hormones that is gonna make the mom very resistant to her own insulin, which is that blood sugar lowering hormone. So that means that the sugar that you, we you know, goes into our bloodstream, usually from food that we consume hangs out in mom's blood, but with gestational diabetes and all these hormones, the sugar just kind of gets passed along back to the placenta. And I think we're gonna talk about kind of what are the implications of having this diagnosis for mom and baby. That's essentially what's happening.

Katie Ferraro (8m 40s):

So Casey, what are some risk factors for gestational diabetes? I know it's not like a one size fits all, but who's gonna be more likely to have this diagnosis?

Casey Seiden (8m 49s):

Right. And to touch on your previous point, you know, we know the rates of gestational diabetes are, they affect anywhere from 10 to like maybe 15, 18% of pregnancies that you know might even be higher. We don't quite have a great statistic on it, but there are a lot of these risk factors such as being of a certain age. Really women over the age of the guidelines say 25 and most of us are.

Katie Ferraro (9m 14s):

So everybody?

Casey Seiden (9m 15s):

In my practice I typically see it's a lot higher percentage over age of 30 or 35, being a certain family backgrounds race and ethnicity backgrounds. So African-American Hispanics, Asian-Americans tend to have higher risk factors for this. Having certain conditions like endocrine conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is tied up in kind of blood sugars and blood sugar control that could put someone at a higher risk Family history. If you have a parent or grandparent with type two or pre-diabetes or a mom who had gestational diabetes, you might be at a higher risk too.

Katie Ferraro (9m 47s):

What if you previously had like a larger gestational age baby?

Casey Seiden (9m 50s):

Yeah, that one too. So maybe your mom or or you yourself had a larger baby but you didn't get diagnosed, you could potentially get diagnosed in the in the next pregnancy too.

Katie Ferraro (11m 10s):

I always remember like when you're studying about gestational diabetes and in the field like the range of like what percent of women they think have it was so wide, I was like how do they not know. Because there is widespread screening, obviously not everybody seeks prenatal care, but most people who have prenatal care, you do get screened for it, right? So can you tell us about the screening or testing process to find out if you do have gestational diabetes,

Casey Seiden (11m 33s):

Right. So if you present to your midwife to your OB with none of those maybe traditional risk factors that we just mentioned, you don't have any of those. You're normally just gonna get screened around that 26 to 28 week mark in your pregnancy. If you're someone who maybe had one or a few of those risk factors, you might be screened earlier in your pregnancy sometimes as early as like 12, 14 weeks. I'm a big proponent of for anyone or especially if you have some of those risk factors even getting checked prior to conceiving. You know if three months before you wanna conceive, you go to your primary care doctor, you get a hemoglobin A1C checked that way you know kind of what's your status coming into the pregnancy.

Casey Seiden (12m 13s):

Cuz some of that could be a missed possibly pre-diabetes diagnosis that like they didn't know about.

Katie Ferraro (12m 19s):

Because that's the thing too, right? There's a lot of overlap. Like sometimes the diabetes "shows up" during pregnancy but it was preexisting prior to that you just never knew because you weren't routinely looking for it or weren't involved in the healthcare system. So there's some overlap too, right? Like some of the gestational diabetes is actually either pre-diabetes or type 2 is that's possible. Right?

Casey Seiden (12m 37s):

Exactly. Yep. They could have had signs of that insulin resistance going on but just never screened for it earlier.

Katie Ferraro (12m 43s):

Okay, so the screening at the 24 to 26 mark, like let's say new moms listening who we get so many pregnant moms listening who are like so organized they're learning about infant feeding before they even have the baby. But like what's the screening like, what do they do?

Casey Seiden (12m 53s):

So here in the US what we have is what called a two step system. So the first step is you would go in and do a 50 gram glucose challenge test. So that's where you don't have to arrive fasting, but you'd come in, you would drink a, the lovely glu-cola sweet sugary drink, 50 grams of sugar, they'll check your blood sugar an hour later. If your blood sugar's over a certain threshold and you quote unquote "fail" or I say just you have an elevated reading, they would recommend you go on to do step two, which is a three hour test where you would have to be fasting for that. They would draw your blood sugar from your, from your vein fasting, you drink the drink, it's a hundred grams of sugar, it's really, really sugary.

Casey Seiden (13m 36s):

And then they would check your blood sugar at one, two and the three hour mark and to have a positive diagnosis for gestational diabetes, two out of the four of those readings would need to be above the established goals.

Katie Ferraro (13m 47s):

So that's why you have to stick around cuz they're constantly measuring what your blood sugar is at the different levels to see does the sugar go into the cells like it's supposed to or is it hanging out in the blood like it's not supposed to.

Casey Seiden (13m 58s):

Exactly.

Katie Ferraro (13m 58s):

Okay. Everyone hates that drink but I actually kind of liked it. Do you think that's weird?

Casey Seiden (14m 1s):

I didn't mind it either. I mean it was sweet but it reminded me of like something I probably had as a kid.

Katie Ferraro (14m 7s):

Yeah tastes like it tastes like the gross off brand, like orange soda is the way I would describe it, that maybe they didn't put enough-

Casey Seiden (14m 14s):

-that melted and it was like you were drinking all the juice of like a pop melted popsicle.

Katie Ferraro (14m 18s):

But some people like make, I mean people make a big deal on social media like girl, women like barfing after it. I'm like okay if you can't handle the drink like you were for a nasty surprise when you have that baby, like it gets a lot gross.

Casey Seiden (14m 28s):

Yeah, I have plenty of people that that happens too. And you know, think about it, if you had like horrible nausea or something,

Katie Ferraro (14m 34s):

No I totally get it. I'm not making light of it. But really if you throw up, if you throw up like what do they do? Like you come back cuz now you're not truly fasting and you might have absorbed some of it. So do you have to like start over the next day?

Casey Seiden (14m 44s):

So people always ask, yeah, what are the alternatives? You know, can they do the jellybean, can they do like a food-based test? We don't really have great data that those are super accurate to make a diagnosis. So what we do at my practice and what the literature kind of says is if you can't tolerate the glucola for any reason, do two weeks of home blood sugar monitoring with the finger sticks, not changing your diet, not doing anything differently than what you are, but checking your blood sugar four times a day, bringing it to your doctor and they would kind of make a clinical decision based off of that.

Katie Ferraro (15m 13s):

Oh that sounds so much worse and like extra work. But I know you were sharing before Casey that with your second pregnancy, so your youngest is seven months old. Do you mind just sharing your experience? Cause like you just went through this?

Casey Seiden (15m 24s):

Yeah, so yeah I passed it with my first baby but the second one I, I did, I had an elevated one hour reading and of course I went through that like "oh my gosh, how, why" like

Katie Ferraro (15m 34s):

You're personally offended, I'm a registered dietitian who specializes in gestational diabetes, how did I possibly fail?

Casey Seiden (15m 39s):

But it just shows it can happen to anyone. So we were actually scheduled to leave on vacation like two days later and I said I wanna know what's going on. I don't wanna delay this and like have to wait till I come back to take the three hour test. So my doctor was fine with me actually just doing the home monitoring for two weeks. So I did that, you know on our vacation. I did it when we come home. Funny story even on our vacation ended up having COVID and like so my blood sugars even with a COVID infection were still fine. So I didn't end up actually having it per my doctor's evaluation.

Katie Ferraro (16m 12s):

Did you have to go retest with the cola when you got back from vacation?

Casey Seiden (16m 16s):

I did not, nope.

Katie Ferraro (16m 17s):

Oh okay. If you had gestational diabetes with one pregnancy, will you definitely have it with another?

Casey Seiden (16m 22s):

Not definitely, no. We do know that that period in between your pregnancies is really important and there are certain things that you could work on to get yourself in a good place to potentially, you know, prevent it from happening again. But it's not a guarantee

Katie Ferraro (16m 36s):

If you get a diagnosis of gestational diabetes, do you have to do insulin or can it be managed with diet and exercise? Are there meds that are safe during pregnancy? What's the protocol these days?

Casey Seiden (16m 44s):

We always start with diet and lifestyle, you know, people are referred to me hopefully within 24, 48 hours of getting that diagnosis so that we can jump on that nutrition, look at their exercise, their sleep, their stress, all of these habits. And I would say the majority of women are able to manage it just through diet and lifestyle. Now the placenta and the hormones sometimes just do their thing. They're really calling the shots. So some women may end up needing to take medication, usually it's to address their fasting blood sugar. That's the one that can sometimes be high and a little bit more out of their control in terms of what diet can influence. So medication options could be, there is one oral medication that, well there's two oral medications, but the most common one that we would use for pregnancy might be metformin.

Casey Seiden (17m 28s):

So that's like the very popular, you know, diabetes drug even outside of pregnancy. So there could be that it does come with some side effects and it just might not be effective for a very long time. So you could be on it for a while, but then ultimately your doctor say, hey, the metformin's not really working anymore, then they would switch you to insulin. So it's usually if your fasting is elevated, you would take an injection of insulin at bedtime to help calm things down overnight. Some women need insulin during the day if their meals are giving them trouble, they might have to take some insulin right before they eat too.

Katie Ferraro (17m 58s):

I never had gestational diabetes, but I can imagine that if I did, I would be highly motivated to try to fix things with diet and exercise before going to meds. Certainly insulin. Do you find that that's the case? You mentioned that one of the things you love about your job is that your patient client base is so highly motivated, like a lot of them worked really hard to get pregnant or they want, they were excited about this pregnancy or they're resigned to like, hey I'm gonna figure this thing out. Do they work really hard at the diet and lifestyle stuff more so than maybe your traditional population of persons with diabetes?

Casey Seiden (18m 30s):

I think it's also because like you're on the clock so to speak. Like you get this diagnosis at 28 weeks and you're just like, oh my gosh, I gotta work on this now hard and fast. So I do find that they're really motivated and some people, you know, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I wanna see, let's say they come to me and they're fasting blood sugar's already high. I don't wanna say and write them off like, oh it's just high, we're going on, you know, medication.

Katie Ferraro (18m 55s):

Yeah, let's watch and wait, like there's no time.

Casey Seiden (18m 56s):

I give 'em like a week or two and we're gonna pull out all the stops. But then sometimes women hit a point where like they're going through, I call it like the gymnastics routine. They're bending over backwards, they're doing all of these crazy strategies. They're maybe waking themselves up early to try to get a good fasting reading. They're doing too much that's not sustainable and it's not good for their lifestyle, it's not good for their mental health. So at a point we have a conversation of like, okay, you're literally doing everything you possibly can and things still aren't well controlled. Let's move on to medication. It is a good, safe option.

Katie Ferraro (20m 25s):

Okay, let's say worst case scenario, moms does not have prenatal screening, does have gestational diabetes, doesn't know it, ergo is not doing anything about it. If you don't manage gestational diabetes, what are the impacts on mom and baby's health?

Casey Seiden (20m 38s):

Yeah, so when the blood sugars stay high, one of the big things that happens, how it affects baby is all that sugar is just getting crossed back over the placenta. The baby's body, their pancreas will sense that and start to make its own insulin. Insulin is also a fat storage hormone. So the baby starts to kind of put on more body fat a little too quickly. So they're gonna get a little larger. We don't necessarily want that to happen cuz it could cause problems. Calm delivery, right? Really big baby, usually with big shoulders, if that's a vaginal delivery, their shoulders could get stuck, you know, which causes maybe more bleeding, more tearing for mom could mean that the baby just can't descend properly so they have to do a c-section or things like that. It also is just stressful for the baby and the mom to be exposed to such high glucose levels.

Casey Seiden (21m 21s):

Mom is at higher risk for preeclampsia if her blood sugars are uncontrolled or even preterm birth the baby, you know, we're kind of doing like fetal programming, right? So we're stressing out their shiny brand new little pancreas in utero. We don't wanna do that. We wanna keep their pancreas from working too hard while they're in the womb. The other risk is then once they are, you know, finally delivered babies here, when they cut the cord, they baby has a risk of actually having their blood sugar drop too low because it can't regulate its blood sugar super well cause it's been in that environment for so long.

Katie Ferraro (21m 51s):

It's pumping out all that insulin that now they don't have a sugar source for it if they go on your, you know, typical infant milk diet, right?

Casey Seiden (21m 58s):

Exactly.

Katie Ferraro (21m 58s):

Okay. And then what about the risk for mom if, is she at higher risk for diabetes later in life if she's had gestational diabetes?

Casey Seiden (22m 6s):

That's what we're finding. Yeah, so from the research it's really, it's a big range though like we said with who's diagnosed, it's a big range of who goes on to develop diabetes and when, I don't wanna quote the exact statistics, but I think a big part of what could lead someone to have that diabetes risk in the future is a lot of the times, you know, what habits are kept in the postpartum period, you know what happens with postpartum weight loss. Not to say that you have to lose all the weight, that's not, you know, a realistic expectation for a lot of us. But kind of getting back to a healthy range, healthy diet habits, moving your body that can help to prevent that risk. But it can be significantly high for some populations to go on and develop Type 2 later on.

Katie Ferraro (22m 45s):

Let's say there's a mom newly diagnosed with gestational diabetes, maybe 28 weeks, it's her first pregnancy, she comes to see you highly motivated to do the diet and lifestyle stuff. From a diet standpoint, what are the like most basic recommendations that you're making to a mom in that situation?

Casey Seiden (23m 0s):

Yeah, I usually sum it up in almost like two words, two phrases. So balance is critical. Learning how to balance your sources of carbohydrate at your meals and your snacks with the other nutrients. So your fats, your proteins, and your fiber. We need to create that balance. And then the other aspect is gonna be kind of personalizing the portion size for you. So I can't sit here and say every pregnant person that I see is going to tolerate the same amount of carbohydrate at meal or at a snack through the glucose monitoring we're gonna learn what's a portion size that your body can personally handle.

Katie Ferraro (23m 33s):

So you mentioned the carbohydrate, so obviously there is some math involved here, right? We don't like to give as a dietitian's prescriptive diet plans, but in the case of hey, you got a few weeks here to get things under control, if you haven't been paying any attention to your carbohydrate. Do you give them like a set number of grams of carbohydrate and then work within their desired meal plan to kind of spread that out and space it out throughout the day?

Casey Seiden (23m 52s):

Yeah, so we talk in kind of gram speak, but then we can also look at portion sizes through like measuring cup speak or even, I'll just use my hands as my visual with them. So I as a framework guide women that most of them can tolerate about 30 to 45 grams of carbohydrate per meal. So we want 'em evenly spaced out throughout the day, more or less. Some women can be a lot more sensitive to carbs in the morning, so they might, you know, fall on the lower end of that, but 30 to 45, what that looks like if you don't have like the nutrition label in front of you to reference how much is the piece of bread, typically 45 grams is about a cup or like a fist full size or it's gonna take up like the quarter of your plate. So that's what I would say is kind of the upper limit.

Casey Seiden (24m 34s):

And then we modify it based on your blood sugars. Snacks, you know, usually guiding people in a little bit less 15, 20 grams of carbs. I find that those often are, you know, your cracker or your rice cake or something that has a label. So you can quickly just kind of reference what that total carb is for a portion.

Katie Ferraro (24m 49s):

Do you find that for most of your patients, the morning carbohydrate results in higher blood sugar spikes during gestational diabetes?

Casey Seiden (24m 58s):

Yes. We're a lot more carb intolerant kind of ins, you know, there's a lot more insulin resistance first thing in the morning. So I'm always encouraging people if they can, to start out with a really protein rich breakfast. Usually things like eggs or you know, yogurt bowl types of situations or cottage cheese, protein shake or smoothie, those go over a lot better than just like oatmeal would.

Katie Ferraro (25m 19s):

So if a mom, a lot of our mom's listening, they've, they already have one baby, a lot of them, but a lot of 'em are going to go on to have more babies. And so if they didn't have gestational diabetes in the first pregnancy in the second pregnancy, they, they don't, they get a high reading as you said, they don't fail, but then they eventually get diagnosed with gestational diabetes. What should they do? Because I know, like I have a friend in the influencer space who just got diagnosed with gestational and she's like, I can't believe this, like I did everything right. Like she's like personally offended by having a gestational diabetes diagnosis. I'm like, you need to get over it. You have a little bit of time here not to panic you, but what, what are the next steps then?

Casey Seiden (25m 50s):

Yeah, they didn't do anything wrong, you know, so hopefully they can get set up with a dietitian or a diabetes educator who could work with them specifically to make it a personalized plan. You know, there are some great, you know, resources out there. I, I have a free downloadable resource. There's other programs outdoor out there as a starting point. But kind of to recap, yeah, what I had said before, I think the main thing, what I would start to focus on from day one is looking at your meals and snacks and asking yourself are they balanced? And making sure there's a protein element in all or most of those eating occasions.

Katie Ferraro (26m 24s):

And I like that you mentioned seeing a diabetes educator. So Registered Dietitian, just so you guys know, there's a few credentialed professionals who can be certified diabetes educators, right? It's what pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and dietitians. Is that correct Casey?

Casey Seiden (26m 36s):

That sounds about right, yeah.

Katie Ferraro (26m 37s):

I think that was, I think I remember but so like not just anybody can go be a diabetes educator, so you have to have that first credential, but then for the food piece it makes the most sense that the Registered Dietitian is the one providing the medical nutrition therapy. So you would probably need to be getting a referral from your OB and I think it's really cool Casey, that you actually work in a high risk OB practice. You're right there for them to refer to you. What if patients are at a regular OB that doesn't have a dietitian at their practice? How do they find a diabetes educator who's also a Registered Dietitian?

Casey Seiden (27m 5s):

Yeah, so you know, they could go onto the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics website, they could go onto the Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist website and you know, find a directory, look on the map of who's in your area, you know, depend on are you willing to pay outta pocket, do you wanna go through your insurance? But those I think would be the first starting points to find someone.

Katie Ferraro (28m 8s):

Okay, Casey as a dietitian specializing in diabetes, I'm just curious to know your thoughts on like the use of like widespread use of diabetes drugs right now for weight loss. Like in the mainstream, like this just, I mean I feel like I know about these drugs forever as a diabetes educator now all of a sudden they're like literally in like subway ads in New York City I know is a big deal this week. Like what are your thoughts on that? Like is this good for business or bad for business? Like what do you think?

Casey Seiden (28m 27s):

As much as I wanna try to drown out that noise, yes, it's like found me like I feel like I, it's inundated my feeds everywhere. Everyone's talking about these, you know, at the end of the day, how sustainable is it to be one of these drug, drugs long term? They also come with really intense side effects. You know, I had plenty of patients use these for diabetes management and they had no appetite. They felt horrible, they felt nauseous, they lost a ton of weight and they, you know, oh you might think that's so great to get complimented on that, but they felt horrible while taking it. You know, a lot of my patients would start it but end up stopping. So I think to use it outside of blood sugar management, you really have to ask yourself like, well what is this accomplishing for me now?

Casey Seiden (29m 11s):

And even like going forward in the long term.

Katie Ferraro (29m 13s):

Well Casey, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating experience. I think gestational diabetes can be really confusing, but you have just a beautiful way of making it very straightforward. I think your patients are so lucky to have you as a resource. I know you also have a private practice, so tell our audience where they can go to learn more about gestational diabetes from you.

Casey Seiden (29m 29s):

I do, so to work with me one-on-one, I have an online virtual practice, so you can head to my website, which is https://www.caseyseidennutrition.com/. So there you can find all the info I do have on my website on the resources section there is my Eat Well With Gestational Diabetes Downloadable Guide. It's a whole resource suite with shopping lists. There's kind of a nutrition 101 recap, everything. Most of the resources that I give to kind of my one-on-one clients just without the personalized support from me. So you can download that. I'm also in about a month gonna be hosting and launching a masterclass specifically to talk about how to control and lower your fasting blood sugar in pregnancy. So that's really exciting and if anyone needs help with that, they should stay tuned for that offer too.

Katie Ferraro (30m 14s):

Wonderful. And where are you on Instagram?

Casey Seiden (30m 17s):

Yes, Instagram. I am @eat.well.together

Katie Ferraro (30m 19s):

I love it. Thank you so much Casey, and I'll link up all of your references in the show notes for this episode https://blwpodcast.com/ as well. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation.

Casey Seiden (30m 28s):

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Katie Ferraro (30m 30s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Casey learning about gestational diabetes and managing blood sugar. As someone who's worked with the adult population for type 2 and type 1 diabetes management, I know how discouraging that work can be sometimes, especially if you're patients and clients like don't wanna be there and aren't listening or don't care what you have to say. And I loved how passionate she is about this topic and she was sharing that one of the reasons why she really loves the work that she does is because her audience is very motivated, like they're kind of under the gun or under the clock as she said. And it is a really stressful time if you have gestational diabetes. But there are things you can do and it is important to be working with a credentialed feeding expert, a dietitian who specializes in diabetes education or has the CDCES credential. And so I'm gonna link to all of the resources that Casey shared in the show notes page for this episode, which you can find at https://blwpodcast.com/episodes/328.

Katie Ferraro (31m 18s):

Thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We're online at https://blwpodcast.com/. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.