Carmel, CA Eating Right And Exercising Can Provide Huge Benefits To Pre-Diabetics

Diabetes has become a huge problem in this country and can have dire health consequences in lifestyle changes aren't made.  It is easy to detect and you need to pay close attention if your physician tells you that you are pre-diabetic.  The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Celeste Roundtree who at 54 was told by her doctor that she was pre-diabetic.  In denial, she didn't listen to his recommendations that she lose weight and stop eating sugary foods like the breakfast cereal she so loved in the morning.  She refused to go to the diabetes-education program that he recommended.  But finally, she realized she had to do something.  "I didn't put everything together until I went to the class and realized I was doing everything wrong," she said.  The National Institutes of Health estimate that one in three adults have pre-diabetes.  Another 26 million have Type 2 diabetes and about 7 million of them don't even know it.  We have a number of clients who have diabetes and it's a very difficult chronic illness to live with.  In fact, one of our clients has had to go in and out of the hospital on several occasions and had to have his leg amputated.  This disease is nothing to mess around with.  "If we can catch them in the pre-diabetic stage, I try my best to put the fear in them that they really have to concentrate on lifestyle changes or they are going to progress to overt diabetes sooner, rather than later and the cat's out of the bag, their life will never be the same," Doctor Adrienne Evans told the Wall Street Journal.  Side effects from the disease are heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and limb amputations.  There is something called an A1C test which measures blood sugar levels over the preceding two to three months which is much better than the standard blood-glucose test that just gives a snapshot at the time you are tested.  If you are over the age of 45 and overweight or have other risk factors like high blood pressure, a family history of diabetes or you belong to an ethnic group at high risk for diabetes, it wouldn't hurt to have the test.  There are many lifestyle changes you can do to make sure it doesn't quickly turn into full-blown diabetes.