Consider it a wake-up call.
Before the onset of diabetes, patients diagnosed with “pre-diabetes” can take steps to stave off the often deadly and increasingly common disease.
“It’s one of those points that will get people thinking,” said Audrey Regan, director for the Office of Chronic Disease Prevention at the state health department. “They hear ‘diabetes,’ and they get concerned, but there are these relatively simple lifestyle changes they can make.”
Patients with pre-diabetes have higher-than-normal blood glucose levels, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
Fifty-seven million people in the United States have this condition, according to the American Diabetes Association, and it may cause long-term damage to the heart and circulatory system.
State statistics on pre-diabetes aren’t available, but 8 percent of Maryland adults have been diagnosed with diabetes, and another 150,000 people are estimated to have undiagnosed diabetes, Regan said.
As diabetes cases have increased, “it’s safe to assume the level of pre-diabetes is also increasing,” she said.
But the diagnosis doesn’t guarantee a life with type 2 diabetes, which is the kind linked to lifestyle.
“That is an indication that something can be done,” said Linda Yerardi, a certified diabetes educator and dietitian at Mercy Medical Center. “We have found if you take action to manage it when it’s pre-diabetes, you can delay or reverse the onset [of diabetes].”
Patients who are over 45, overweight with a body mass index of 25 or more, or have a close family member with diabetes are at the most risk for pre-diabetes.
Studies have shown that even a 5 percent to 10 percent weight loss and exercising for 30 minutes a day five days a week can cut the risk in half, said Dr. Belal Bakir, medical director for the state’s Diabetes Initiative.
“That is a huge plus for prevention,” he said.
Americans’ sedentary lifestyle and poor diet is causing the rise in diabetes in recent years, said Jane Kapustin, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and nurse practitioner at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Joslin Diabetes Center.
Type 2 diabetics — which accounts for 90 percent of diabetics — make enough insulin but can’t convert the sugar into usable fuel, Kapustin said. Complications include cardiovascular disease, stroke, disorders in the kidneys and eyes, and a loss of feeling in the nerves of the fingers and toes.
“Diabetes is nasty for so many reasons,” she said, adding patients’ lives are often consumed with managing it through shots, monitoring sugar intake and measuring blood glucose levels.
“It manages you.”
