Fat chance
0 Comments | Daily Post; Liverpool (UK), Nov 7, 2009 | by KATE HODAL
WHEN Douglas Nichol, 65, discovered during a visit to his GP that his blood glucose levels were high, he thought little of it.
But Mr Nichol was suffering from prediabetes, an underdiagnosed condition that makes people up to 15 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes.
He had no symptoms nor any history of diabetes in his family. But he was overweight, a major risk factor for prediabetes.
“I weighed almost 15 stone and had a BMI of 29,” he says. “I was at risk not only of high blood pressure and heart attack, but diabetes, too.”
Mr Nichol’s condition isn’t unique. An estimated nine million adults in the UK have prediabetes, according to a report from health charity Diabetes UK. Being overweight is a major risk factor for developing prediabetes. Yet nearly half of UK adults underestimate their own weight, research for National Obesity Week, which ends tomorrow, shows.
Prediabetes causes blood glucose (sugar) automatic blood pressure monitor levels to be higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes. Research has shown prediabetes may cause long-term damage to the body, especially the heart and circulatory system.
However, prediabetes is a preventable condition that can often be reversed. In fact, the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes can be reduced by 60% simply through losing even just a moderate amount of weight and adopting a healthy, balanced diet coupled with moderate exercise.
“It’s staggering that nine million people in the UK have prediabetes, which is often a precursor to Type 2 diabetes, a serious condition which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputation and blindness,” says Diabetes UK Chief Executive Douglas Smallwood. “Identifying and educating people with prediabetes is vital as it’s not too late for many to make healthy lifestyle changes, reverse the condition completely and reduce their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. It’s time for all of us to get serious about our health if we want to have any chance of defusing the ticking time-bomb of Type 2 diabetes.”
Like diabetes, prediabetes is a condition whereby the amount of glucose in the blood is too high. This is a result of the pancreas not producing enough insulin. In some cases, the insulin that it does produce doesn’t work properly. Prediabetes is thought to affect some 15% of the UK population.
Diabetes is separated into two groups: Type 1, whereby the body is unable to produce any insulin and is unpreventable; and Type 2, which accounts for as many as 95% of all diabetes sufferers, and tends to occur in people over the age of 40.
Recent figures show more than 145,000 new cases of mainly Type 2 diabetes were diagnosed in the past year, making the total number of diabetes sufferers in the UK a staggering 2.6 million. As many as 500,000 people are thought to suffer from diabetes in the UK and not know it.
A person’s risk of developing prediabetes depends on age, ethnic background, family history and lifestyle. Prediabetes sufferers tend to be overweight or obese at diagnosis, as Mr Nichols was.
Around 90% will have a family history of prediabetes or have high blood pressure and cholesterol.
South Asians develop diabetes at three times the rate of white Europeans. But “none of us are immune to prediabetes”, says Diabetes UK’s Natasha Marsland.
Symptoms include feeling tired or thirsty, getting up to wee in the night, blurred vision, unexplained weight loss, wounds that have trouble healing, thrush and genital itching. But you don’t need to feel any of those symptoms to already be suffering from the condition.
You can reduce your risk of prediabetes by as much as 60% by following a healthy diet and lifestyle. Maintaining weight control is central to reducing risk because fat in the body can get in the way of insulin, says Marsland