How to stop diabetes and prediabetes before they start

According to the International Diabetes Federation, 733 million people worldwide have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, 12 million of them in Canada.

Prediabetes is like your body sending you a red flag. It’s a glucose intolerance that means you’re at increasing risk of developing type 2 diabetes if you do nothing.

Among other things, type 2 diabetes causes accelerated aging of blood vessels and can greatly increase the chances of heart disease.

You’ve probably already heard that type 2 diabetes is a chronic, irreversible disease. But we now understand that a healthier lifestyle can stabilize and even reverse the disease.

What is prediabetes?

Prediabetes is when blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough for a diabetes diagnosis. Prediabetes often goes hand in hand with being overweight. It’s a sign that it may be time to take action to change certain habits.

University Professor Normand Mousseau didn’t listen to this signal. At age 46, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. “The news hit me hard,” he says in his testimonial shared with the Montreal Heart Institute’s Observatoire de la prévention du diabète.

Normand Mousseau immediately got to work fighting his diabetes. His story is a source of motivation for anyone wanting to regain control of their health.

He had to review his habits from A to Z: diet, physical activity, work routine and so on. While not everyone can do what he did, lessons can be learned from his experience.

What are the symptoms of prediabetes?

The first tip is to watch for the onset of symptoms. In general, signs of prediabetes include:

• an increase in blood sugar levels,
• more frequent fatigue,
• unexplained weight gain,
• increased and more frequent thirst and
• more frequent urges to urinate.

These early symptoms could put you at risk of complications. Prediabetes can also sometimes cause very real damage to blood tissue, which can lead to a risk of complications related to diabetes.

In Professor Normand Mousseau’s case, a highly sedentary lifestyle led to diabetes.

What are the health risks of prediabetes?

Prediabetes should not be taken lightly.

Here’s how prediabetes affects several metabolic functions, according to Dr. David Jenkins, Director of the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto: “After a meal, glucose is less well used by muscles and other organs that need it. This is a condition called insulin resistance. As a result, the pancreas must produce more and more insulin to compensate.”

Prediabetes disrupts metabolism, leading to insulin resistance. This can damage blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart disease, kidney problems and impaired vision.

When we don’t eat for several hours, even at night, our liver releases more glucose to give the body energy, and our pancreas responds by secreting more insulin.

“This continues until the pancreas can no longer keep up,” adds Dr. Jenkins. “So it gets exhausted, and blood sugar starts to rise.”

Also, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prediabetes increases your risk of:

• type 2 diabetes,
• heart disease, and
• stroke.

How to prevent type 2 diabetes

Prediabetes can be prevented, or even reversed. It can be as straightforward as a series of changes to your lifestyle habits.

As Professor Normand Mousseau showed: if you focus on certain specific behaviours, you can minimize the impact of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes on your health.

Also, for some years now, the Montreal Heart Institute has seen that it’s possible to recover from type 2 diabetes. This has been observed in a large proportion of obese people who have managed to lose weight and maintain it over a long period. 

Moreover, since the creation of a prediabetes and diabetes remission clinic at the Institute’s EPIC Center, Canada has seen the first published cases of diabetes remission due to changes in lifestyle habits.

Here are some key habits you can work on:

1. Maintain a healthy body weight

Prolonged, significant weight loss is associated with remission of the disease. According to a recent clinical study, 46% of participants who lost 15 kg or more went on to achieve remission of type 2 diabetes.

Additional research conducted at Leicester General Hospital in the United Kingdom found that even a small, sustained loss of just a few pounds is enough to lower your risk. And it may even reverse prediabetes.

2. Stay fit and active with exercise

Regular physical activity helps maintain a healthy weight and promotes the efficient use of glucose by muscles.

Normand Mousseau took up running, which helped him eliminate the disease, but other activities can also be adopted. Regular walking is a good place to start.

3. Follow for prediabetes diet

Favour vegetables and reduce meat consumption. Control calories to avoid excessive weight gain. For weight loss, a low-calorie diet can produce good results.