What Can Gestational Diabetics Drink Besides Water?

Staying hydrated will help stabilize and manage blood sugar levels in Gestational Diabetics. Dehydration can induce high blood glucose levels and can cause ketones production. Ideally, you should drink 8 -12 glasses (2-3 litres) of water per day in the gestational diabetes diet. During exercise or in warm weather, you need to drink more water. Drinking water doesn't reduce blood sugar levels. But it helps to excretion excess sugar out of your body by urine.
Drinks that contain caffeine like coffee, tea, and fizzy drinks are diuretics, and you should limit them. Diuretics cause dehydration and frequent urination. If you dislike the flavour of water, you can test carbonated water with added lime and lemon.

So, water is the best drink for gestational diabetes, but there are some other drinks that you can use in your diet plan, including:
• Carbonated water or unsweet flavoured water.
• Decaffeinate tea or coffee or light tea and coffee.
• Herbal tea
• Zero, lite, or no added sugar drinks like zero Fanta, Diet Pepsi, etc.

Note that the light, zero, and diet fizzy drinks contain naturally-occurring sugars. But they include much less sugar than the original full-sugar ones. Also, they contain artificial sweeteners, and you shouldn't drink them on the diabetic diet too much.
Read labels to understand how much sugar you receive and restrict them if they affect your blood sugar levels.

Carbonated Drinks

Carbonated water is made by adding carbon dioxide under pressure to water. The result is that water contains the weak acid, carbonic acid.
Drinking a lot of carbonated water might make you feel bloated, so you should avoid carbonated water if you don't want that.

Decaffeinated Tea and Coffee

Decaffeinated coffee or tea is the same as regular coffee and tea but has most of its caffeine removed; still, they contain a small amount of caffeine, but a minimal amount compared to the regular ones.
Studies show that high caffeine consumption (more than 200 milligrams of caffeine per day) during pregnancy causes infants to be small for their gestational age (stage of pregnancy) or at risk for intrauterine growth restriction. So if you want to drink coffee or tea instead of water, you should care about the caffeine content of the gestational diabetes diet.

Herbal Tea

Despite the name, herbal tea is not tea, as these beverages typically do not contain tea plants' leaves or leaf buds.
Herbal teas are made from tisanes, blends, or infusions of dried fruits, flowers, spices, or herbs in water.
Dietitians recommend herbal teas in moderation with medical approval as they can pose risks to individuals with certain health conditions. Avoid herbal teas that contain added sugar and other additives in your gestational diabetes diet.

Diet Soda

Diet soda is also an alternative for those who don't like pure drinking water.
Diet soda almost has less than ten calories from carbs and zero sugar; they use artificial sweeteners to give an excellent taste to the soda. Diet soda curbs the sugar craving without sugar loading, and it is very low in calories.
But note that drinking diet soda in the long term may cause gain weight and other health risks, so if you like to drink diet soda, you should use a small amount of them.

Milk is one of the healthiest drinks on the planet. But if you have gestational diabetes, you should know that milk and other dairy contain a natural sugar called lactose.
You should put milk and low-fat dairy in gestational diabetes because of the calcium content, but you shouldn't overeat them, and they must be counted as daily allowable carbs.
Each serving of milk (240 ml) contains 12g of carbohydrate or almost one tablespoon of sugar. Then you can drink it as a snack to prevent hypoglycemia too.
The best alternative to cow milk in the gestational diabetes diet is almond milk, and soy milk. Coconut milk, and hazelnut milk are good alternatives too.

Drinking carbs are worse than eating them, so you need to pay more attention to what you drink. Using some drinks is safe in the gestational diabetes diet, but using some is not. Following are the worst drink for a diabetic pregnant mom:
• Ready to drink juices like Ribena and Oasis.
• Concentrated or pure fruit juices like orange juice and apple juice.
• Coffee and tea with added sugar.
• Diluting squash like a full-sugar orange squash, high-juices.
• Energy and sports drinks like red bull, Lucozade, protein shakes, or isotonic drinks.
• Full sugar carbonated drinks like ginger beer, Coke, Pepsi, Irn-bru, lemonade, lilt, tango.
• Ice coffees and coolers with added syrups.
• Milkshakes like Yopp, burger king milkshakes, and MacDonalds.
• Smoothies like innocent smoothies.
• Hot chocolates, like full-sugar hot chocolates.