Preventing Pre-Diabetes

What you eat, when you eat, and how you feel after you eat, all can help determine if you're living with pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes is more referring to when your fasting glucose levels are going up. Usually you can see in the hemoglobin A1C that it's starting to climb. It's not necessarily in the diabetic range, but it's getting there. Discussing a patient's sleep patterns, exercise, and diet can help determine if they're at risk for developing diabetes. There is a lot of different gray area between completely normal and actually being diabetic, which is where the pre-diabetic range is really where you can help people so much before they get to actually full-blown diabetes. Health experts may also use the hip-to-waist ratio to determine if a patient is at risk. If a patient carries their fat in the belly, they're at a higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes. A lot of people just don't really know that they're creeping up towards that, which is probably the scariest thing about it. Experts encourage healthy diets of fruits, vegetables, and fiber, and limiting animal protein. Exercise is so important when it comes to preventing diabetes. Sleep is always important as well, stress reduction. It's really the core of everything that you hear for staying healthy. A blood test to check the patient's A1c, triglyceride levels, and cholesterol can ultimately decide if a patient is at risk for type 2 diabetes, making it important for patients to have regular visits with their doctor. For Lee Health, I'm Lindsay Fry.