

Insulin resistance seems to increase dramatically when someone has a larger waist circumference (which is often considered a waist size of 40+ inches for men and 35+ inches for women), as noted by scientists in a 2011 study. It is also associated with reduced insulin sensitivity, which, in turn, can fuel the progression of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes. These lifestyle changes are cost-effective, safe, and are effective in reversing prediabetes:īeing overweight or obese puts you at risk of a number of serious health conditions, ranging from heart disease and high blood pressure to stroke, diabetes, and even cancer. Here’s 13 achievable steps you can take right now to reverse prediabetes and help prevent type 2 diabetes. But it’s important to note that prediabetes itself can be damaging - many diabetes already have tissue damage by the time of their diagnosis. Reversing prediabetes is possible with certain lifestyle changes. While a prediabetes diagnosis should be a loud wake-up call, it doesn't imply that you will automatically get type 2 diabetes. Uncontrolled diabetes can lead to an array of health complications, from stroke and heart attack, to kidney disease, tissue damage, blindness, and a string of life-threatening infections. If left untreated, prediabetes can turn into fully-fledged type 2 diabetes, a chronic health condition in which your body is unable to effectively absorb glucose for metabolism, resulting in high blood sugar. Someone is diagnosed with prediabetes if their FPG test returns a result of between 100 and 125, or if your A1C results between 5.7% and 6.4%. What’s more, detecting the condition is fairly easy using a common blood test like the Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) test, an HbA1C test, as well as other insulin resistance tests like a glucose challenge. As a nearly silent condition, with very few symptoms that are apparent outside of a blood test. Insulin resistance is when body cells don’t respond properly to this hormone, causing blood sugar to spike.Īn estimated 9 out of 10 Americans with prediabetes don’t know they have it, but it is easy to understand why. You can think of insulin as the special key that provides glucose with access to the cells where it will eventually be used to make energy. The hormone insulin is produced by the pancreas and its role is to regulate the absorption of sugar - or glucose to be more accurate - into the cells. The exact cause is not yet clear to the scientific community, but it’s often linked to insulin resistance. It’s a common, yet serious condition in which your blood sugar is elevated in between normal levels and the higher levels of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Prediabetes is an increasingly worrying health condition that affects almost 40% of Americans.
