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Tuesday's Health Report: Reversing prediabetes
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BATON ROUGE — According to the CDC, more than 38 million Americans have diabetes and another 98 million have prediabetes.
Experts see this as a growing problem.
"And we are not seeing this not only in the Western world, in the US, but we're also seeing it in the rest of the world as well. And, you know, it's something that's an eye-opener. And when you tie it into the obesity pandemic that we have going on, I think there's a lot of work to be done,” said Dr. Peminda Cabandugama with the Cleveland Clinic.
Prediabetes is when your blood sugar levels are elevated but are not high enough to be type two diabetes. If left untreated, type two diabetes can cause serious health issues, like heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, vision loss and nerve damage.
While type two diabetes cannot be cured, pre-diabetes can be reversed with healthy eating and regular exercise. Sleep and stress matter too.
"The world has changed from what, you know, we had maybe a few years ago. Stress levels are higher. Our sleep is not as good. Our diet is not as good,” said Cabandugama, “We tend to be more sedentary, especially with COVID, I think we were a lot more sedentary. And now I think people are starting to kind of realize that. So, all these concepts together have brought out all these chronic diseases and prediabetes is one of them, just like obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol is part of it."
Prediabetes is diagnosed using a blood test. Symptoms are not always obvious, which is why annual check-ups are important.
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