If your doctor tells you that you have "a touch of sugar" or "you're borderline," you most likely have pre-diabetes. This puts you at greater threat for developing type 2 diabetes, so it should be closely monitored and managed.
Being told that you have "just a touch of sugar" or that you are "borderline" means your blood sugars are higher than normal but not high sufficient to be regarded as diabetes. These days the common term for this condition is pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes is diagnosed by a fasting (before breakfast) blood glucose reading of in between 100 mg/dl and 125 mg/dl (5.5 mmol/l and 6.9 mmol/l) or an oral glucose tolerance test where your glucose level two hours into the test is between 140 mg/dl (7.8 mmol/l) and 199 mg/dl (11 mmol/l).
Minor insulin resistance causes the elevated blood sugar levels of pre-diabetes and significantly increases the chances of developing diabetes. However, even though approximately 6-11 % of people with pre-diabetes develop diabetes each year (and, if left untreated, most people with pre-diabetes go on to create fullblown diabetes within ten years), you can lower your risk of getting type 2 diabetes by taking certain actions.
Today approximately 57 million people in the United States have pre-diabetes. Even though your physician may not pay it much attention, endocrinologists know that the same complications associated with type 2 diabetes, such as heart and blood vessel disease and kidney and eye illness, often happen during pre-diabetes.
In the 2008 American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Conference, Dr. Robert Sherwin of Yale University School of Medicine said, "Damage begins before glucose levels rise to a point where diabetes is diagnosed." Studies show that about 10 % of people with pre-diabetes have diabetic eye damage and that individuals with pre-diabetes have one and a half times greater risk of heart illness and stroke. Most internists and endocrinologists agree that pre-diabetes isn't taken seriously sufficient.
I've interviewed many people with type 2 diabetes who, looking back, realized their doctor had told them years before they got diabetes that their sugars had been a little high but did not impress upon them the worth of making changes. Sam, at thirty-two years old and 290 pounds, had pre-diabetes. He was so busy working 3 jobs that he ate only one home-cooked meal a day and got all his other meals on the run.
To get Sam to change his methods, his physician finally had to say, "Sam, if you don't lose that weight you'll die a young man." More than the next seven years Sam lost eighty pounds. Regrettably, he regained them, and only when suffering from unbearable fatigue did he go back to his physician to hear him say, "Sam, you have diabetes."
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