Diabetes epidemic
Looking after your health is a Life Sentence
Looking after your health and well being is not a part time job. You have to maintain all your efforts for a healthy body every day for the rest of your life.
All the squandering of your health begins to show at age 60. That’s when you notice you have gained weight and don’t have the same stamina and energy.
Don’t shrug it off. Pay attention. I’ts time to start taking that 30 minute walk nearly every day, do some exercises and check your blood pressure and glucose levels.
Go to your primary care physician to get a physical and ASK to be checked for pre-diabetes. The numbers of people in America with pre-diabetes are frightening especially when you realize that most of them will go on to have type 2 diabetes.
Doctors do not emphasize the danger of pre-diabetes enough, it is very dangerous, and it will have life-long consequences.
It’s up to each of us to be our own advocate. Most of us have no idea that we are eating too much sugar and too many carbohydrates. If you believed all the commercials on TV for fast food restaurants, you'd think that pizzas and huge bacon cheeseburgers are harmless. Be proactive take charge of your future well-being.
When I was told I was borderline diabetic the only information I was given was “no carbohydrates and no sugar” which sounded impossible. Be sure to ask for more help and make sure you have a talk with your doctor and get definite instructions on how to reverse this. It is reversible and it is relatively easy. Get some pamphlets from your doctor, do not depend on searching for information on the internet - you won't find a source of will power and self- determination on the internet.
Of course, you will need to change your diet to get back to normal, but you will need, not just a diet, but a complete list of the best types of food to eat to combat the lack of insulin. I.e., whole grain bread, brown rice, legumes and more fruits and a big variety of vegetables.
The hardest part of remaking yourself is maintaining the new ‘back to normal’ body. Reversing pre-diabetes, losing the excess weight and walking two miles a day is not a cure. It is a life sentence.
If you don’t keep on that diet, if you don’t keep walking every day, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t watch your blood pressure (reduce salt) – YOU ARE DOOMED.
I understand our own minds and bodies want desperately to keep all that extra weight. It is very difficult to have the will power to overcome that little voice that says “Oh, it’s only one slice of pizza” or “one scoop of ice cream won’t hurt”.
But, it will hurt. It will hurt when you have to take blood pressure medicine every day. It will hurt when you have to take insulin pills or, even worse, give yourself shots. It will hurt your pocketbook and your bank account. Your insurance premiums will be higher. Have you noticed the cost of prescription drugs these days?
So, take your punishing life sentence with grit and determination. Have the will power to get that healthy body so you can live a long and interesting life.
References
https://www.imaware.health/blog/reversing-prediabetes-fast
Reversing Prediabetes Fast: 13 Lifestyle Changes You Can Make Now
Prediabetes is an increasingly worrying health condition that affects almost 40% of Americans. It’s a common, yet serious condition in which your blood sugar is elevated in between normal levels and the higher levels of a type 2 diabetes diagnosis.
What Causes Prediabetes?
The exact cause is not yet clear to the scientific community, but it’s often linked to insulin resistance. The hormone insulin is produced by the pancreas and its role is to regulate the absorption of sugar — or glucose to be more accurate — into the cells.
You can think of insulin as the special key that provides glucose with access to the cells where it will eventually be used to make energy. Insulin resistance is when body cells don’t respond properly to this hormone, causing blood sugar to spike.
An estimated 9 out of 10 Americans with prediabetes don’t know they have it, but it is easy to understand why. As a nearly silent condition, with very few symptoms that are apparent outside of a blood test.
What’s more, detecting the condition is fairly easy using a common blood test like the Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) test, an HbA1C test, as well as other insulin resistance tests like a glucose challenge. Someone is diagnosed with prediabetes if their FPG test returns a result of between 100 and 125, or if your A1C results between 5.7% and 6.4%.
Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes
If left untreated, prediabetes 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 prediabetes diagnosis should be a loud wake-up call, it doesn't imply that you will automatically get type 2 diabetes. Reversing prediabetes is possible with certain lifestyle changes. But it’s important to note that prediabetes itself can be damaging - many diabetes already have tissue damage by the time of their diagnosis. A wake up call and a call to action.