4 Steps To Manage Your Diabetes
Prediabetes is a very common condition around the world, and roughly 15% of all South Africans have or will have it at some point. As the name indicates, prediabetes is when you have high blood sugar levels but not high enough to be considered diabetes. While it is not the same thing as diabetes, prediabetes significantly increases your risk of developing diabetes.
As such, it is important to seek treatment for your prediabetes to keep it from getting worse. Prediabetes is diagnosable with a simple blood test that you can get performed at a hospital or health clinic. If you are diagnosed with prediabetes, this article contains the information you need to treat and control it.
The good news about prediabetes is that it is very manageable and treatable without medications or surgery. In most cases, making dietary and lifestyle changes is all you need to keep prediabetes from turning into diabetes. However, it’s important to be proactive and deliberate when you are fending off prediabetes. Here are some of the changes you will need to make.
The first thing your doctor will recommend if you are prediabetic is to make dietary changes. Nearly all cases of prediabetes happen because you are consuming too many sugary products and your pancreas cannot keep up. Therefore, it will be necessary to ingest less junk food, sugary drinks, and processed foods.
Instead, you should opt for a healthy, well-balanced diet of lean protein, carbs, fruits, veggies, and whole grains. However, don’t eat too much fruit, as it is high in natural sugar.
In addition to a healthy diet, it will also be necessary to get a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes of exercise each day. Exercise does not always have to be an intense job or workout, but you should include those workouts occasionally.
While prediabetes and diabetes aren’t limited to overweight or obese people, it is much more common among that population. Therefore, if you are considered overweight or obese, it is important to lose weight to keep your prediabetes under control. In most cases, weight loss is a side effect of the healthy lifestyle changes you make.
The use of tobacco products, specifically smoking, can complicate prediabetes. Smoking can keep insulin from doing its job, which is to regulate your blood sugar levels. Therefore, when you stop smoking, insulin is more effective at keeping your blood sugar from getting too high.
In addition to eating healthy foods and getting exercise, there are also natural supplements you can take to control prediabetes. Here are a few popular options.
While these supplements might help control prediabetes, there is relatively little evidence. Additionally, you should always talk to your doctor before taking these supplements to ensure they will not cause more harm than good.
If you are at high risk of developing diabetes and lifestyle adjustments are not doing the job, your doctor might recommend metformin. Metformin is a medication that helps control your cholesterol, which, in turn, helps keep prediabetes under control. However, it is always best to deal with prediabetes through natural remedies before opting for medication.
For most people, prediabetes is a good wake-up call that it is time to make changes in your life. It is a sign that your blood sugar levels are dangerously high and could lead to diabetes. Luckily, as long as people take action and do the things in this article, starting with diet and exercise, prediabetes rarely turns into diabetes. In most cases, it only leads to diabetes if you don’t make the necessary changes and start making healthy choices.