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5 Things to Do To Prevent Prediabetes
By pohheng | July 7, 2008
If you have Prediabetes or Impaired Glucose Tolerance IGT, it means that your blood glucose (sugar) levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be considered diabetes (Read here for the tests for prediabetes and diabetes).
Do you know that once you developed into diabetes, there is no turning back and you have to live with this dreaded disease for the REST OF YOUR LIFE?
The common saying is that “Prevention is Better Than Cure” so if you can prevent prediabetes from happening, why don’t you do it?
Here are the 5 Things to do to Prevent Prediabetes
1. Lose weight. Being overweight and obese puts you on a high risk of developing prediabetes. By simply losing about a tenth your body weight, you will significantly reduce your risk by up to 50%. Trouble losing weight? How about trying out this?
(Note : If you have trouble losing weight and are staying in Singapore, do drop me an email at admin@stopprediabetes.com, I have tied up with a qualified weight loss coach especially for my readers.)
2. Increase physical activities. Get up and do more exercise like walking, swimming, aerobics, tai chi etc. A 30 minute workout a day can effectively reduce your risk of developing prediabetes and many other diseases, not forgetting to mention helping to lose weight too.
photo by CathyK
3. Change to a healthy diet. It has been shown that a diet high in vegetables, white meat like chicken and fish and whole grain helped lower risk of developing prediabetes. My personal advise is to go for low Glycemic Index (low GI) food (Click Here!), eat less fried food, less soda, less carbohydrates, low fat diet.
4. Regular checking of blood glucose. If you are above the age of 40, it is advisable that you check your blood glucose levels at least once a year. If you are below 40, try to do it once every 2 years. These are important as if your blood glucose are elevated, you can do further tests. The types of tests you can do are (find out in detail here)
For example in my case, i was diagnosed with diabetes with Fasting Plasma Glucose FPG of 126mg/dl in 2007 which was considered diabetes. The range for FPG of prediabetes was 108 ~125mg/dl but in 2005, my FPG was already at 100mg/dl which was abnormally high. If I have taken notice it then, I would not have developed prediabetes.
5. Observe symptoms of prediabetes. It also pays to observe your own health condition and check if you have the following symptoms of prediabetes like sudden weight loss, extreme thirst and fatigue. For the Top 10 symptoms, check it out in this link.
In my case, I had more than these 3 symptoms and attribute it to the birth of my second child and increase in exercising frequently. What a mistake, it was prediabetes at work. Read more in this post.
If you serious about your own health, I strongly urge you to start doing the steps above. Do not wait and procrastinate, its your life and no one else will be interested if you are not interested.
In the coming posts, I will write for people who are already prediabetes on how to prevent yourself from developing into Type 2 Diabetes.
If you like what you are reading, how about getting regular updates by leaving your emails on top of my page or you can leave your valuable comments here too. Thank you.
Topics: Blood Sugar Control, Diabetes Overview |
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
Hi PH,
i have to agree that “Prevention is better than cure”. Perhaps the problem for most of us is the kind of “Busy” lifestyle we all face in our bid for financial freedom.
In my case, lunch and dinner is mostly “Outside Food” and “Exercise” seems to be more like a “Luxury” than a “Necessity”.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi Derrick,
Sad to say that is the reality to most people. High cost of living so work extra hard for money and neglect health, thinking that they can always take care when they are older.
Hopefully, my blog can reach out to more people to bring them awareness to prediabetes.
thanks again.