How to Prevent Your Prediabetes From Turning Into Full-Blown Diabetes (pegged to National Diabetes A

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prediabetes likely affects around 38% of the United States population — that’s over 97 million people. 

November is National Diabetes Month, which aims to raise awareness of the disease so people can avoid developing it. This year’s campaign focuses on prediabetes, which is a precursor to full-blown Type 2 diabetes.

At Integrative Health DPC in Zionsville, Indiana, we’re passionate about helping patients avoid health problems by providing up-to-date information. This month, we take a look at prediabetes, share why everyone should be aware of this critical stage in diabetes development, and offer advice to keep it from becoming full-blown diabetes.

Understanding prediabetes

So, what is prediabetes? As the name suggests, it’s a stage you go through before full-blown diabetes develops. When you have diabetes, your body is unable to regulate the levels of sugar in your blood. You need some sugar for fast access to energy, but too much can have devastating effects on your body.

If you have Type 1 diabetes, your body can’t produce insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar. Type 1 diabetes is unpreventable and incurable, but it’s manageable with medication. Type 2 diabetes is also linked to insulin production issues and often involves insulin resistance — a state where your body doesn’t respond to insulin.

Most often, Type 2 diabetes occurs in people who carry excess body weight, particularly when they also eat a high-carb, high-fat diet and don’t exercise regularly. Type 2 diabetes typically worsens gradually, with blood sugar levels rising over months or even years and going unnoticed until you reach the diabetes threshold.

Prediabetes is fully reversible. Beyond this stage, however, the tissue, nerve, and organ damage becomes increasingly severe and the hope of reversal falls significantly.  That’s why it’s so important to identify rising blood sugar as early as possible.

Identifying prediabetes

Prediabetes doesn’t cause any symptoms, so it’s not something you can spot yourself. By the time symptoms develop, you have full-blown diabetes and could already have irreversible tissue damage.

However, know this: Diagnosing prediabetes is quick and straightforward. We take a blood sample from you, give it to our on-site lab for analysis, and report the results. If you have prediabetes, we work with you to address the causes and get your blood sugar back to a healthy level.

These tests routinely form part of our preventive medicine services, such as annual physicals and well-woman or well-man checkups.

Stopping prediabetes in its tracks

As soon as we see that your blood sugar levels are elevated, we discuss the reasons with you and create a personalized treatment program to reduce them. For the majority of patients, prediabetes treatment involves weight loss and lifestyle changes to prevent insulin resistance from worsening.

We weigh you, compare the result to your ideal weight, and determine how much you should lose. Our medical weight loss plans are sustainable, tailored to your needs, and designed to promote steady, achievable progress. 

We offer nutrition counseling to ensure you eat healthy meals and monitor your well-being throughout the program with regular reviews and blood tests.

Sensible measures like these are the best way to stop prediabetes from developing into full-blown diabetes. Call us today to inquire further or arrange a prediabetes check using the Integrative Health DPC website to request an appointment.