Dr. Nathan answers the question: 'What Is Pre-Diabetes?'
Question: What is pre-diabetes and can I prevent my pre-diabetes from developing into full-blown type 2 diabetes?
Answer: Pre-diabetes is a recently coined term to describe people whose blood sugar levels are starting to rise, but they haven't gone up high enough to be considered diabetes. The way to find out if you have pre-diabetes is to go to your doctor and get a fasting blood sugar test or a test called a glucose tolerance test. And either one of these will tell you if you have pre-diabetes.
If you have pre-diabetes you are at much higher risk to develop diabetes and it can occur over the course of a year, or five years, or 10 years. In order to decrease your risk, in general, we recommend that people lose some weight and increase their activity levels. A study called the Diabetes Prevention Program showed that you can decrease the development of diabetes in people with pre-diabetes by almost 60 percent by losing a little bit of weight and increasing your walking.
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