Diabetes Awareness: Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF.org) · National Institutes of Health · American Diabetes Assn. · Diabetic Avengers
Source: Diabetes.org
With prediabetes, action is the best medicine. For some people with prediabetes, early treatment as well as moderate lifestyle changes can actually return blood glucose (blood sugar) levels to a normal range, effectively preventing or delaying type 2 diabetes. Ask your doctor plenty of questions and listen to their answers. Increase your daily physical activity. Start eating healthy. And your life can be yours again.
There are no clear symptoms of prediabetes so you may have it and not know it. But before people develop type 2 diabetes, they almost always have prediabetes—where blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. It is possible that you may have some of the symptoms of diabetes or even some of the complications. If you think you may have diabetes or prediabetes, check with your doctor and get tested.
If you discover that you do have prediabetes, remember that it doesn’t mean you’ll develop type 2, particularly if you follow a treatment plan and make changes to your lifestyle through food choices and physical activity. Even small changes can have a huge impact on delaying or preventing diabetes all together. Work with a health care professional to make a plan that works for your lifestyle, or look for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-recognized lifestyle change program, guided by a lifestyle coach trained to use a CDC-approved curriculum, where you will meet other people who are working to prevent diabetes.
A healthy meal plan for people with diabetes is generally the same as healthy eating for anyone. In fact, there are a lot of different eating plans that can help you manage your diabetes. In general, a healthy eating plan for diabetes will include lots of non-starchy vegetables, limit added sugars, swap refined grains for whole grains and prioritize whole foods over highly processed foods when possible.