Prediabetes means your blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough for a diagnosis of diabetes. Prediabetes is a serious health condition that increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
It’s estimated that 98 American adults have prediabetes. Nine out of 10 people with prediabetes don’t know they have it.
Without intervention, many people with prediabetes could develop type 2 diabetes within five years. The vast majority of people with prediabetes do not know they have the condition.
Diabetes Prevention Program
We provide evidence-based diabetes prevention lifestyle change programs to help you build healthy new habits that last a lifetime.
Causes
Insulin is a hormone that acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells for use as energy. If you have prediabetes, the cells in your body don’t respond normally to insulin. Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond. Eventually your pancreas can’t keep up, and your blood sugar rises. This sets the stage for prediabetes—and type 2 diabetes down the road.
Risk Factors
You can have prediabetes for years but have no clear symptoms. It often goes undetected until serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes show up. Talk to your Health care provider about getting your blood sugar tested if you have any risk factors for prediabetes, such as:
- Being overweight
- Being 45 years or older
- Having a parent, brother, or sister with type 2 diabetes
- Being physically active less than 3 times a week
- Ever having gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy)
- Giving birth to a baby who weighed more than 9 pounds
- Having polycystic ovary syndrome
- Race and ethnicity are also a factor
It is important to find out early if you have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes because early treatment can prevent serious problems that diabetes can cause, such as loss of eyesight or kidney damage.
Preventing Diabetes
If you have prediabetes, you can lower your risk for developing type 2 diabetes by:
- Losing a small amount of weight if you have overweight
- Getting regular physical activity
A small amount of weight loss means around 5% to 7% of your body weight. That’s around 10-14 pounds for a 200-pound person. Regular physical activity means getting at least 150 minutes a week of brisk walking or a similar activity. That’s 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
Information for Health Care Providers
Nation Diabetes Prevention Program toolkit is for health care providers to help patients lower their chances of getting diabetes.
National DPP Customer Service Center provides organizations easy access to information and resources about prediabetes and the National Diabetes Prevention Program.