Prediabetes is the single greatest hidden health threat around the world. Prediabetes, also known to be caused by insulin resistance affects millions of people around the world. Insulin resistance is not a condition where you either have it or not, it happens gradually or in gradient.
The effect is that many prediabetic people are queuing up to join the already diagnosed diabetic patients in just 5 years, which increases the number of people who need diabetic treatment.
Several reports have implicated insulin resistance as a leading cause of chronic illnesses like hypertension, Alzheimers and so on.
The scale used to determine prediabetes is the hemoglobin A 1C (HBA1C) test, and it measures the amount of blood sugar (glucose) attached to hemoglobin. Blood sugar has some of it bound to red blood cells and red blood cells live for about 3 to 4 months. This makes it the ideal test to know the level of your blood sugar in 3 to 4 months. It’s more reliable and stage this way.
Normal A 1C should be somewhere around 5 and anything less than 5.7 is normal. If over 5.7 but below 6.5, then it’s considered prediabetic and anybody over 6.5 has type 2 diabetes.
And the reason it’s described as prediabetic is that about 75% of prediabetics will develop type 2 diabetes. Most people in that percentage will get diabetic in about 5 years. The effect is that many prediabetic people are queuing up to join the already diagnosed diabetic patients in just 5 years, which increases the number of people who need diabetic treatment.
However, if those that are prediabetic can know on time and work on an optimal blood glucose level, we can reduce the number that transition into diabetes. Being aware of how tolerant or how the body handles glucose early can help prompt necessary lifestyle changes that can put a stop to this transition. Some factors that cause the massive momentum towards diabetes are eating sugar, high carbs and processed foods. And unless people change, the reason some won’t have diabetes yet will be because they are younger. The level at which young people think they can get away with not taking care of themselves early is alarming and they only have to abuse their bodies long enough before consequences appear.
Almost everyone has a glucose or carb handling problem most of whom are not paying attention to the effects of high carb diets.
A prediabetic will have a blood sugar that is higher than normal but not as high as diabetic (fasting glucose for prediabetic will be 100 to 125 mg/dl and A 1C will be 5.7 to 6.5 mmol/l).
90% of people with prediabetes don’t know that they have prediabetes because blood sugar is the common routine test done to determine diabetes. And this may not be helpful because the body regulates blood sugar level within a narrow range to provide energy for important organs like the brain. Multiple systems within the body raise the blood sugar when it’s low and lower it when it’s high in order to maintain a constant range (homeostasis). Because of this tight regulation, there are no disease manifestations until the regulatory system has completely failed.
Insulin measurement is the most accurate way of measuring blood glucose metabolism in the body because blood sugar can maintain a normal constant range for years without changing. Insulin measurement however will tell us the level of insulin produced to keep the blood sugar level down which makes it a true measurement of insulin resistance (prediabetes). The relationship between blood sugar level and insulin level will produce an accurate insight. If insulin level is about 2 to 3 times the level of blood glucose, it means the body works so hard to keep sugar level down, which will eventually blow up into a disease state.
Normal insulin range is between 2.6 to 25.
Bottom Line:
There are more people on the diabetic borderline in recent times than before. Hence, early detection could inhibit the rise of diabetic casualties significantly. It is important for people to know that simple lifestyle changes can provide easy solutions.
In addition, the paradigm for diagnosing diabetes has to change as people become more aware, and should also affect diabetic treatment in hospitals.
The treatment of type 1 & 2 diabetes may need to be reviewed because the standard treatment of administering insulin to lower blood glucose may not be ideal when compared to lowering blood glucose levels, which is better.
Policing Diabetes
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