Saturday, November 18, 2006

What is Pre-Diabetes?

Diabetes is the most common metabolic disorder in the world. It is caused by absolute or relative deficiency of insulin. The total deficiency causes the Type 1 diabetes and the relative deficiency causes the Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes. Diabetes is most prevalent in south east Asian countries.

There are several risk factors associated with diabetes like acquired, environmental, genetic etc., Acquired factors are like age, family history. Environmental factors are like Obesity, physical inactivity, stress, BMI. The prevalence of diabetes increases with the increasing family history of diabetes. The modern living has changed the life style pattern in such a way that the insulin sensitivity is adversely affected.

The prevalence of diabetes also increases with the age factor. Indians develop diabetes at a very young age. ‘Pre-diabetes’ is the term that denotes a stage prior to the onset of diabetes. This is a stage when an individual’s blood sugar level is higher than normal, but not high enough to be termed as diabetes. This stage of pre-diabetes is also of two types: impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance. The fasting plasma glucose test or the glucose tolerance test could be used to detect pre-diabetes. This requires fasting overnight.

Individuals with pre-diabetes are not only at the risk of developing diabetes but also considered to be are increased risk of coronary heart disease. The pre-diabetes is not accompanied by any symptoms and can be detected only by sugar tests. The pre-diabetes is an opportunity for preventing diabetes. The treatment consists of weight loss through exercise, Eating vegetable and fruit diet.

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