Do you think you might have prediabetes? The best way to find out is to consult with your doctor and have yourself tested. It’s also helpful to listen to your body, and watch out for those symptoms and warning signs, so you can stop diabetes before it’s too late.
Diabetes is a chronic condition that affects the body’s ability to process glucose. Undiagnosed and managed poorly, it can lead to blindness, heart disease, stroke, and limb amputation. Rates of diabetes are increasing worldwide. According to Medical News Today, around 537 million people worldwide have diabetes, with the number of cases predicted to grow.
On the other hand, prediabetes is a serious health condition where a person has higher than normal blood sugar levels, but not enough yet to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes. Sure, prediabetes might not sound as alarming as a diabetes diagnosis. But the alarm bells are ringing. A prediabetes diagnosis is a warning call, your last chance to prevent full-blown diabetes.
Here are the 8 prediabetes symptoms you should know about. Again, if you suspect you have pre-diabetes, set an appointment with your doctor and have yourself tested.
- Unexplained Weight Loss
Glucose is our main source of energy, and insulin released by the pancreas helps deliver it around the body.
However, with prediabetes, the body is not able to deliver glucose well. In effect, the body gets its energy from stored fat, leading to rapid or unexplained weight loss.
- Increased Thirst and Frequent Urination
Prediabetes can be tricky, and often people miss out on these two sneaky signs: increased thirst and frequent urination.
This is what transpires: when blood sugar levels are high, and the body is no longer processing them properly, excess sugar is stuck in the body. The kidneys then go on an overdrive to remove the excess sugar, leading a person to frequently urinate. As a result, the body loses water quickly, leading to excessive thirst. Watch out for these signs, if you consume lots of water, yet you still feel dehydrated, or your mouth feels dry, consult with your doctor asap.
- Extreme Hunger
At this point with prediabetes, the body is not absorbing glucose effectively like before. As a result, your body and brain register that you need more food to have energy, causing you to feel unusually hungry.
However, even if you eat more, the body couldn’t extract the energy efficiently, so the cycle of unexplained hunger continues. Medically, the condition of having insatiable hunger is called polyphagia.
- Blurry Vision
Many things these days could cause poorer vision, such as too much screen time, lack of sleep, and smoking. But it can also be a warning sign for prediabetes.
An excess of blood sugar can damage the tiny blood vessels in the eyes, causing blurry vision, or swelling of the eye lens. It’s similar to the blurring of the focus lens on a camera.
The good news is, if you catch prediabetes, including taking note of these symptoms or warning signs, you can prevent blurry vision and other eye damage from happening.
- Slow Wound Healing
Think of your body as a well-oiled and trained army. Our immune system, in particular, man their posts 24/7, guarding our bodies, and ready to take action upon any sign of attack.
If we’re wounded, our first line of defense is the white blood cells, who rush to the wounded site and enable healing. However, if the insulin and glucose have gone haywire, the white blood cells seemingly have no energy and are lethargic. They’re unable to do their job well, and fast. This is because with prediabetes, the immune system is down, and inflammation is up in the body.
- Tingling or Numbness on Hands and Feet
Numbness and tingling on hands and feet is known as peripheral neuropathy, caused by damages to the nerves in one’s extremities. Overtime, high blood sugar levels can affect blood circulation, and damage the nerves. This happens as oxygen is no longer distributed evenly in the body. Left untreated, peripheral neuropathy can lead to more serious complications.
- Fatigue
It’s common to feel tired and fatigued these days, with many responsibilities to be juggled in your life. But for people of normal health, resting usually does the trick. The extreme fatigue in prediabetes is of a different nature. It’s fatigue that never seems to go away.
Fatigue is caused by the lack or lessened ability of the body to process glucose effectively. As glucose isn’t being absorbed and used well, the body lacks energy, causing one to feel tired or fatigued constantly.
- Mood Swings
According to the Diabetes Care Community, blood sugar and mood or emotions are very closely associated. The brain uses sugar for energy, so if our blood sugar goes up and down, it affects our mood. Because diabetic and prediabetic people have a harder time balancing blood sugar levels, they have trouble controlling their mood levels as well.
How to Reverse Prediabetes
With early detection and lifestyle changes, prediabetes is reversible. By incorporating regular exercise and a proper diet in your life, these preventative measures can also improve other areas of your health.
- Exercise.
For prediabetes, it is recommended that you do 150 minutes per week of moderate intense activity (see more in this article). This includes brisk walking, light cycling, dancing or swimming. It is any physical activity that can increase your heart rate and breathing. By doing regular exercise, you’ll improve the way your body stores and uses glucose, as well as your stamina, and heart health.
- Eat Clean.
Doctors advise you to eat clean as much as possible. This means eating whole natural and unprocessed foods, such as veggies, fruits, whole grains, animal and plant-based protein, nuts and seeds, and oils. It’s eating as close to nature as possible, and avoiding highly processed and packaged food. Red meat is also discouraged.
“Eating food with high fiber feeds the gut microbiome, which produces metabolites that aid in blood sugar metabolism,” says Dr. William Li, an internationally renowned medical doctor, researcher, president/founder of Angiogenesis Foundation, author of The New York Times bestseller Eat To Beat Disease.
- Create a Customized Diet
Work with a nutritionist to figure out which foods should be avoided, and what kinds of food you should buy in the grocery, as well as how you can cook healthful meals yourself. There are also nutritionists who can offer to prepare the meals for you. Be careful to work with a credible nutritionist, preferably someone your doctor recommended.
- Manage Stress Better
Stress leads to an increase in the hormone cortisol, which can cause the body to produce more glucose, negatively affecting blood sugar balance. So if you’re prediabetic, it’s important to cut back stress and to learn to manage it effectively. You can do this by trying meditation, working out, reading a book, playing with a pet, immersing yourself in nature, or doing simple deep breathing.
The Importance of Early Diagnosis
Gone are the days when diabetes was considered a sickness among older people. These days it’s become increasingly common among young people in their twenties and even in their teens, due to dietary factors, rates of obesity, and lack of physical exercise.
With prediabetes, catching it before it gets worse and becomes full-blown diabetes is crucial. Recognizing prediabetes can allow a person to reverse the disease.
Watch out for these 8 symptoms of prediabetes, and never skip your annual health check-up.
With diabetes, it’s all a matter of making lifestyle changes and working with a health professional to stop the disease dead in its tracks.
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References:
https://www.wayneunc.org/wellness/health-talk-blog/health-talk/2021/10-silent-symptoms-of-diabetes/
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prediabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20355278
https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes-age-of-onset
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21498-prediabetes
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