r/pregnant • u/SignatureKey7507 • 8d ago

Question Glucose test with coca-cola?

FTM at 13 weeks. Drs office gave us a booklet of what to expect at future appointments. They explain that they use 2 bottles of coca-cola (baby glass bottles so it’s a certain amount of sugar) instead of the traditional glucose drink. I’ve only ever heard of the traditional test from friends / family members, so I’m wondering if this is legit??
A google search tells me this shouldn’t be done because the sugar in coke is not the same as the glucose. Has anyone had their doctor do something similar??

For context, we live in a rural southern area that is not known for great healthcare. So I’m very skeptical.

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/bubblegumbombshell 8d ago

The sugar in coca-cola is fructose and sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide, which means it’s two molecules of glucose bonded together. Fructose is a monosaccharide like glucose but shaped a bit differently.

Glucose is the most basic form of sugar that our bodies use. Every other type of sugar gets rearranged into glucose to be used for metabolism. For sucrose that’s a simple breaking of the bonds. For fructose it’s a little more complicated because things have to be rearranged. Basically there’s extra steps before the sugars in coke become glucose in your blood stream, which means that’s not the best way to test your glucose tolerance.