By MNT
Diabetes — specifically type 2 diabetes— is becoming one of the most challenging health problems of the 21st century. By 2025, 380 million peopleTrusted Source worldwide are also expected to be diagnosed with diabetes.
As diabetes is a risk factor for many other diseases and chronic health conditions — cardiovascular disease, renal disease, stroke, and blindness to name a few — its management and treatment is ever more crucial.
However, before people go on to develop type 2 diabetes, many people are considered in a precursor stage called prediabetes. This is a health condition in which people experience higher than healthy blood sugar levels — but not so much that it can be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, having prediabetes is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes.
When it comes to scaling this problem, looking at the statistics of people with prediabetes paints a clear picture: over one in threeTrusted Source people in the U.S. and the U.K. are diagnosed with prediabetes.
So, if prediabetes is seen as an early warning sign for type 2 diabetes, is there nothing people can do to correct their course? Could serious lifestyle changes not reverse this condition?
These questions and more were the topic of discussion for our May podcast “In Conversation: Can diet and exercise help reverse prediabetes?” Joining Dr. Hilary Guite and me this month were Dr. Thomas Barber, associate clinical professor at Warwick Medical School and consultant endocrinologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, and Healthline Media and Medical News Today Managing Editor Angela Chao, who shared her story about how she reversed her prediabetes diagnosis and the lifestyle changes she made to sustain it.
-Medical News Today
