It is customary to treat the adherents of a healthy lifestyle with condescension. Like, all now are lovers of PP, fitness gurus – and in general, what can you do for the sake of a beautiful profile on Instagram.
However, a healthy lifestyle is not just a fashion trend, but also a real chance to reduce the risks of developing various diseases, in particular, prediabetes. Doubt? Let’s tell you now!
What is Prediabetes?
Unfortunately, this concept is not very well known to a wide audience, despite the fact that almost 20% of the Russian population aged 20 to 79 suffers from prediabetes. Prediabetes is a precursor to type 2 diabetes, which also increases the risk of heart disease. In the absence of preventive measures for seven years, patients with prediabetes are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes mellitus and significantly increase the risk of complications such as strokes, heart attacks, decreased vision and kidney damage.
Like type 2 diabetes mellitus, prediabetes is a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism, it is based on a decrease in the sensitivity of various body tissues to glucose. However, at this stage, the elevated plasma glucose level does not yet reach the levels characteristic of type 2 diabetes mellitus and is considered reversible.
The insidiousness of prediabetes lies in the fact that it does not have significant clinical symptoms, that is, it does not manifest itself in any way in everyday life. In most cases, prediabetes is diagnosed almost by accident: during a routine medical examination or testing for any medical purpose. It is this situation that is important to change in order to reduce the incidence rate in general.
And how will a healthy lifestyle help?
A healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition and reasonable exercise are the main ways to control prediabetes, prevent it and, therefore, prevent the development of type 2 diabetes in the future. This is a unique pre-disease of its kind that helps prevent type 2 diabetes mellitus, you just need to find out about its existence in time, and in the case of diabetes, prevention is much easier than treatment
Scientists have conducted various studies that clearly show how the chances of developing prediabetes (and, accordingly, type 2 diabetes) are reduced when changing the lifestyle to a healthy one. Here are the parameters worth paying special attention to.
Physical activity: It is recommended to introduce at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week into your life (do not rush to be intimidated – this is just a reasonable 20 minutes a day).
Body weight: it is important to track your BMI (calculated using the formula body weight in kg / height in m2), it must be less than 25.
Diet: it is better to give preference to a balanced diet, reduce the amount of fat, give up fast carbohydrates, industrial sweets and other foods high in sugar.
What else can you do?
One of the most important things you can do to prevent prediabetes is to donate fasting plasma glucose regularly. This is the simplest and most accessible analysis (it can be done, including for compulsory medical insurance), which will help diagnose prediabetes in time and (if confirmed) control its course.
It is especially important to regularly check your glucose levels for those who fall into one of the following categories:
age over 45 years;
the presence of direct relatives who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus;
overweight (BMI over 25);
habitually low level of physical activity;
polycystic ovaries;
gestational diabetes (“pregnancy diabetes”) or a history of having a baby weighing more than 4 kg.
If you have read this list and realized that some of its points apply to you too, the main thing is not to panic. A kind of “bonus” to prediabetes is that (unlike type 2 diabetes) it is completely reversible.
Just donate blood regularly for fasting plasma glucose and remember that early diagnosis, timely lifestyle changes, healthy diet and reasonable exercise can significantly reduce the risk of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes!