Diabetes is a disease where a person’s body can’t regulate sugar properly. Over time it can lead to serious health complications, including heart attack, stroke, vision loss, kidney problems and nerve damage.
Each year, the fourth Tuesday of March is Diabetes Alert Day.
“There’s several types of diabetes, but the most common one is Type 2 diabetes, which develops over time,” said Dr. Kwame Akoto, an internal medicine physician at Kaiser Permanente. As for what contributes to diabetes, the keys are aging, family history and genetics, diet and fitness level.
In recent decades, as researchers have learned more about how diabetes progresses, as well as treatment and prevention, doctors have sought ways to prevent patients from developing Type 2 diabetes.
“Typically, what we see is people go from normal sugars to what’s called prediabetes,” said Akoto. “And this is when your body starts to have those first triggers of sugar intolerance, and then the process worsens from there.”
In 1980, the American Diabetes Association first introduced the diagnostic criteria for prediabetes to determine the likelihood of someone developing diabetes.
“Typically, prediabetes has no symptoms,” said Akoto. “According to the CDC, about 38% of American adults — which is about 96 million people — have prediabetes, and we think about 80% don’t know that they have it.”
In the District of Columbia, approximately 3,000 adults each year are diagnosed with diabetes, he said. In Maryland, approximately 28,000 receive the diagnose each year, and in Virginia, approximately 40,000.
How to identify prediabetes
In prediabetes, a person’s blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association.
“The U.S. Preventive Task Force, which makes guidelines for us to implement screening with our patients, did recommend for adults between the ages of 35 to 70 who are overweight or obese should be screened at their visits,” said Akoto.
Laboratory screening involves a blood draw — including a fasting plasma glucose test, which measures blood sugar after an overnight fast.
“The one you’ll most likely see is called a Hemoglobin A1c test, which is a sugar average test that’s looking at your average sugar over eight to 12 weeks,” said Akoto. “That’s probably the one you’ll see most commonly used now, because it gives us so much information, instead of that spot test.”
Lifestyle changes can prevent diabetes
Getting a prediabetes diagnosis doesn’t mean a patient will develop diabetes.
“Lifestyle changes are really important,” said Akoto. “With controlling body weight, we do see research shows that 5% to 7% of body weight loss will reduce your risk of diabetes by 58%.”
Adding exercise activities such as walking, using a treadmill, bike riding or resistance training is important in heading off diabetes. “We recommend 150 minutes a week, split up any way that you like,” he said.
A healthy diet should include more fruits and vegetables, said Akoto. “These are high fiber foods that slow down how the sugar absorbs in our gut. Lean proteins also have the same effect, so incorporate things like fish, or turkey or chicken.”
Kaiser Permanente operates a yearlong Diabetes Prevention Program, which aims to lower the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes in participants.
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