These days, the term borderline diabetes is being heard about a lot. Borderline diabetes is also known as prediabetes, and it is a condition that develops before a person develops type 2 diabetes. Borderline diabetes is also known as impaired fasting glucose or glucose intolerance. This means that when one gets borderline diabetes, one’s blood sugar levels go higher than normal, but are not enough to be considered as diabetes.
When one gets prediabetes, one’s pancreas still produces enough insulin to respond to the ingested carbohydrates. Insulin is not effective enough in removing sugar from the bloodstream, and the blood sugar still remains in the body. This condition is called insulin resistance. Having prediabetes doesn’t assure the fact that you will suffer from diabetes, but it is a sort of warning as people who get prediabetes have a 5 to 15-fold higher risk of suffering from type 2 diabetes than people whose blood sugar levels are normal.
Prediabetes: Early Warning Signs
It has been found that only 10 percent of the people who suffer from prediabetes come to know about their condition as no symptoms show up. People who suffer from insulin resistance in its early stages develop type 2 diabetes when the condition prolongs too much.
Risk Factors Of Borderline Diabetes
You must always know the risk factors of borderline diabetes:
1. Being obese or overweight
2. Being inactive
3. High cholesterol
4. High blood pressure
5. Close family member with type 2 diabetes
6. Birth of a baby weighing more than 9 pounds
How To Determine Borderline Diabetes?
It is advisable that a regular health checkup must be done to detect prediabetes. A doctor’s consultation is important for early detection of borderline diabetes or prediabetes. Doctors usually recommend a hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) test or an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to determine if a person is suffering from borderline diabetes. The HbA1c test indicates the blood sugar patterns over the last 2 to 3 months and it is better to always take an overall picture than taking just a single fasting blood sugar check. If the HbA1c level is between 5.7 and 6.4, it indicates that a person is suffering from prediabetes.
Prediabetes And Its Potential Complications
Untreated high blood glucose levels can affect our health and organ systems and also, make us vulnerable to various health risks and chronic health issues. The potential complications that may arise from uncontrolled diabetes are nerve damage, kidney damage, vision loss, and cardiovascular diseases, among many others.
Change In Lifestyle
A few lifestyle changes can prevent a person from borderline diabetes. Read on to find out what food and exercise habits can take charge of your health and prevent prediabetes.
1. Healthy Eating Habits
It is important to have whole foods and complex carbohydrates such as grains, beans, and starchy vegetables and stop having simple sugars present in processed baked foods. To help a person prevent diabetes, a dietitian’s consultation is always important.
2. Exercise Well
Exercise at least 150 minutes every week. If you are not keen to do hardcore exercises, take a walk from time to time.
3. Lose Weight
If you are overweight, lose enough weight to reduce the risk of getting prediabetes. A healthy diet and increase in activities help you lose weight easily and the loss of even 5 to 10 percent of the body weight helps in reducing the risk of diabetes.
4. Medical Help
Those who suffer from prediabetes are prescribed medications such as metformin, which help in increasing the insulin sensitivity and keep blood glucose levels in check.
It is important to start making healthy lifestyle changes as soon as you can to prevent borderline diabetes and also, to keep your blood sugar levels in check.
