(NaturalHealth365)  Most women who deal with pregnancy complications breathe a sigh of relief once their baby arrives healthy.  The gestational diabetes goes away, the high blood pressure returns to normal, and life moves on.  But what if those nine months were actually your body’s way of sending you an urgent message about your future health?

New research suggests that’s exactly what’s happening.  A major study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology tracked over 4,000 women across nine countries for more than a decade after they gave birth.  The findings are troubling news for women who have dealt with pregnancy problems.

Those temporary pregnancy problems?  They might be early warning signs that your risk of heart disease has permanently doubled or even quadrupled. We’re not talking about minor increases in risk here. Women who had pregnancy complications face significantly higher chances of heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular problems decades later.

When your body tries to tell you something important

Dr. Jaclyn Borrowman from Northwestern University, who led this research, explains it this way: pregnancy acts like a stress test for your cardiovascular system.  The complications that develop aren’t just random bad luck – they’re revealing vulnerabilities that were already there.

About one in five pregnancies in the United States involves some kind of complication.  That means millions of women each year are getting early glimpses into their future health risks, but most have no idea what they’re looking at.

The study followed these women for 10 to 14 years after giving birth, checking their blood pressure, blood sugar, and other heart health markers.  Researchers had a big question they wanted to answer: Do pregnancy problems make women sicker later on, or do they show problems that were already there?

The answer ended up being both.  That’s why this matters so much for women everywhere.

Extra weight makes everything worse

Here’s where things get really concerning.  Women who were overweight before getting pregnant and then had complications during pregnancy didn’t just bounce back to normal afterward.

Take gestational diabetes, for example.  You might think it goes away once the baby is born, but that’s not what happened to most women in this study.  Years later, they still had higher blood sugar levels and elevated A1c numbers – the kind of readings that put you on the path to full-blown diabetes.

Same story with pregnancy-related high blood pressure.  Many of these women ended up with chronic hypertension as they got older, which dramatically increases their chances of having heart attacks and strokes.

The researchers looked at 4,269 women from nine different countries, tracking what happened to them based on their weight before pregnancy and any problems they had during those nine months.  What they saw was quite alarming.

These pregnancy issues were making women’s cardiovascular health worse for years and years afterward.

Each problem creates its own future risks

Something that caught researchers off guard was how different pregnancy complications led to different long-term health issues:

Women who got gestational diabetes during pregnancy didn’t just return to normal blood sugar levels afterward.  Many ended up developing type 2 diabetes later in life, bringing all the heart problems that come along with that disease.

High blood pressure during pregnancy often turned into permanent hypertension.  These women were basically setting themselves up for much higher risks of heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure as they aged.

Dr. Garima Sharma runs preventive cardiology and women’s heart health programs at Inova Health System.  She says these findings really drive home how important it is to address weight problems before women get pregnant, not just for a healthier pregnancy, but to prevent heart disease decades later.

The opportunity most women don’t know about

What makes this research really important is that it shows there’s a window of opportunity that most people are missing.  Instead of waiting until women start having heart problems in their 40s and 50s, doctors could spot high-risk women much earlier, during their childbearing years.

Managing weight before pregnancy turns out to be one of the best ways to protect both immediate pregnancy health and long-term heart health.

Don’t wait until it’s too late

This research sheds light on a previously unknown aspect of pregnancy complications.  Instead of treating them like temporary problems that go away after delivery, doctors need to think of them as serious health warnings that require years of follow-up care.

Women who have had pregnancy complications should be getting regular heart health screenings and work hard to manage things like weight and blood pressure.

The research team is now looking into whether early pregnancy interventions could prevent both immediate complications and long-term heart problems.  This kind of work could end up saving thousands of lives.

Your pregnancy may have ended years ago, but what it revealed about your heart health is still important today.  Don’t brush off the signals your body was sending.

Since pregnancy complications create lasting cardiovascular risks, many women are looking for ways to strengthen their heart health and prevent future problems.  Jonathan Landsman’s Cardiovascular Docu-Class features 22 leading experts sharing natural approaches to heart health that don’t rely on risky pharmaceutical treatments.  These strategies can help women address cardiovascular damage and build stronger, healthier hearts for the long term.

Sources for this article include:

Jacc.org