Prediabetes - Part I

On the previous post, I have discussed the different diabetes signs and symptoms. This current article will touch on how to go about identifying prediabetes.

Prediabetes is a stage between normal and diabetes stage given by the US department of Health and Human services and ADA in year 2002 with the intension to create awareness to people the seriousness of diabetics. According to the ADA statistics 17 millions US citizens are diabetic and 16 millions are prediabetic. ADA defines as a stage before the development of diabetes, with normal glucose tolerance, but with an increased risk of developing diabetes in near future.

Prediabetes is a condition when your blood sugar level is higher than normal, but not so high by which we can justify as type 2 diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41 million U.S. adults aged 40 to 74 have prediabetes. And the same reports from, The American Academy of Pediatrics show that, one of every 10 males and one of every 25 females have prediabetes aged from 12 to 19 years.

Some of the signs and symptoms of prediabetes can take a long time to change and finally characterised as diabetes. However, a vice versa conversion from prediabetes to normal glucose level was also observed under careful control of diet and sticking to exercise regime. People suffering from prediabetes may show same symptoms as in diabetes but, they will be erupting occasionally like:

1. Excessive thirst
2. Excess Hunger
3. Frequent Urination
4. Irritability
5. Frequent infections
6. Blurred vision
7. Skin itching

In addition, some of the risk factors or people in risk zone of prediabetes than others are due to the incorporation of one or more of the below mentioned factors:

1. Being overweight or obesity

2. Family history of prediabetes - genetic inheritance

3. Waist hip ratio - Increase fats accumulation around the abdominal region

4. Depression and stress - trigger the release of hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine which result in the disruption of metabolic system and increase glucose.

5. Dysfunctional pancreas - result in the incapability to release pancreatic enzymes which include insulin, glucagon and somatostatin. Without proper secretion of these pancreatic enzymes, patients are more susceptible toprediabetic where individual suffers from little high sugar than normal patients. The reason behind high sugar is entry of glucose into the blood cells due to disturbance in the mechanism of insulin. Thus sugar is circulating in the blood stream but unable to penetrate into cells and tissue, to produce energy. The exact reason of this is uncertain but it is considered that overweight and fatty tissues along with sedentary lifestyle are the correlating factors.