Diagnosed with Pre-diabetes
More and more people these days are finding themselves being advised by their GP that they need to start looking after their health and that they are in the pre-diabetic stage.
Diabetes in the UK is rising rapidly and its estimated that unless something changes more than 5 million people will have diabetes by 2025
There are a number of things you can do if you have discovered you are pre-diabetic.
It can be pretty terrifying news and all sorts of unhappy thoughts may start whirling around your head, but you can make some quick changes to improve your health and hopefully your prognosis.
Never make any health or lifestyle changes without first checking with your GP, especially if you have other health issues or any underlying illness’s.
So what is pre-diabetes? It’s a disease of insulin resistance and impaired blood sugar regulation. Anyone can develop pre-diabetes, but some people are at higher risk. Some of the areas of higher risk are:
Being overweight or obese
Having low physical activity levels
Getting inadequate amounts of high-quality sleep
Having high levels of chronic stress
Having low HDL (“good”) cholesterol under 35 mg/dL
Having high triglycerides over 250 mg/dL
Smoking or using other tobacco products
You may also be at risk if you have a family history of diabetes or are from certain high risk ethnic groups.
If left untreated, pre-diabetes 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. 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.
While a pre-diabetes diagnosis should be a loud wake-up call, it doesn't imply that you will automatically get type 2 diabetes. Reversing pre-diabetes is possible with certain lifestyle changes. But it’s important to note that pre-diabetes itself can be damaging, many people already have tissue damage by the time of their diagnosis.
A wake up call and a call to action.
What are the warning signs of being pre-diabetic?
These can sometimes be hard to spot but some include, blurry vision, cold hands and feet, dry mouth, excessive thirst and frequent urination.
Some changes that you can make to improve your health are in relation to your diet, your physical movement, your weight, and monitoring blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Nutrition
Foods to avoid if you are pre-diabetic include sweets (pastries, cookies, cake, pie and doughnuts), refined carbohydrates (white bread, pasta, bagels, crackers, pretzels), sweetened breakfast cereals, flavoured yogurt, fried foods, fatty meats, crisps, snack bars, and others high fat, high sugar foods. Instead of these try and eat foods high in fibre and low glycemic foods like fruits and vegetables.
Exercise
Move more! Even walking daily can really help. Build up slowly after checking with your GP. Maybe start at 5-10 minutes and build to 30 minutes of walking a day.
Weight loss
If your weight is part of the issue, by losing just 5 - 10% of your body weight will make a huge difference. Weight loss can be steady and manageable without feeling deprived of food, by adding lots of healthy foods you will feel great and weight loss will be easier.
I help my clients with all of these areas of wellness from eating better to moving more and even weight loss.
Please reach out to your GP for advise or join me for a free consultation to discover how I can help.
Sarahstannard.com