Q:What is meant by pre-diabetes?

A: Pre-diabetes is a diagnostic. It's when blood glucose is higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. It's also called "impaired glucose tolerance" or "impaired fasting glucose". As with type 2 diabetes, people with pre-diabetes often have insulin resistance and are overweight.

Two things are happening when people develop pre-diabetes: People slowly lose their insulin - making cells - beta cells. By the time type 2 diabetes is diagnosed people have often lost more than half of their beta cells. The body works overtime to produce more and more insulin. When it can no longer produce enough insulin, blood glucose it rises into pre-diabetes ranges. People develop a relative insullin deficiency - a lot of insulin is produced but there's not enough to cover needs. Also, people typically develop insulin resistance—when the body's cells aren't able to use the insulin it makes and/or there's an insensitivity to the body's insulin. People with pre-diabetes, as with type 2 diabetes often also have high blood pressure and abnormal blood cholesterol (lipid) levels which also arises, in part, due to insulin resistance. Check out Stop Type 2 in Its Tracks to learn more

Risk factors for pre-diabetes below.

In July 2009 an international expert committee recommended that A1C (the long term measure of blood glucose control over the last 2 to 3 months) be used to diagnose people at high risk for diabetes (instead of blood glucose numbers). The cut point indicating a high risk of diabetes is: >6.0% - < 6.5%. If you believe you have pre-diabetes, ask your healthcare provider to do an A1C check with blood taken by the lab.

A large study completed in 2003 called the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), showed that losing ~ 5 to 10 lbs (10-20% of starting body weight) and getting 150 minutes of physcial activity (usually walking) a week (30 minutes 5 times a week), helped people prevent progressing from pre-diabetes to type 2 diabetes. My book Diabetes Meal Planning Made Easy can help you make the type of step by step changes people did in the DPP to eat healthier and trim off a few pounds.

If you have pre-diabetes: TAKE ACTION NOW!

You are likely to have pre-diabetes if you:

• have a parent or sibling who has or had diabetes
• are African American, Hispanic American, Native
• are American/American Indian, Asian American or Pacific Islander
• have low HDL (good cholesterol) <35
• have high triglyceride >250
• have high blood pressure >140/90
• have a history of gestational diabetes or having babies weighing >9 pounds at birth
• are overweight (BMI > 25)