Overlooked by Doctors
High-normal blood sugar is anything but normal. Too high to be healthy
yet too low to be called diabetes, high-normal blood sugar has
long been overlooked by doctors and their patients alike. Yet
an estimated 16 million Americans have it--including tens of
thousands of children and teens.
The rise of the high-normal blood sugar epidemic is the direct
result of the rise in overweight and obesity in the United States.
Our lifestyles have changed; our bodies haven’t caught
up.
"Our bodies are essentially the same as they were 40,000 years ago,
but our eating and exercise habits have changed tremendously," says
Bryant Stamford, Ph.D., director of the Health Promotion and Wellness
Center at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
"The same number of calories it might have taken our prehistoric
ancestors an entire day to hunt and gather, we can now have brought
to our door with a phone call. We simply eat too much and exercise
too little," says Stamford.
The result: high blood sugar. The danger: More and more research
links even “slightly” high blood sugar to food cravings,
mood swings, and overweight, as well as pregnancy and fertility problems,
heart attacks, stroke, full-blown type 2 diabetes, and even, early
evidence suggests, some forms of cancer.
It’s serious. That's why Prevention magazine recommends getting
a blood sugar test and taking steps to keep your sugar levels within
a healthy range.
The High Cost of High-Normal Blood Sugar
Normal blood sugar ranges from 60 to 90 milligrams of glucose per
100 milliliters of blood (mg/dl) before a meal.
High-normal blood sugar is defined as 100 to 125 mg/dl (full-blown
type 2 diabetes is diagnosed at 126 mg/dl and above).
Without a blood sugar test, it's impossible to know whether your
blood sugar falls within a normal range. And because elevated blood
sugar typically does its damage silently, it’s easy to brush
off what few symptoms there are, like fatigue and mood swings.
High-normal blood sugar can lead to the following conditions:
• Overweight
• Syndrome X
• Pregnancy diabetes
• PCOS
• Full-blown type 2 diabetes
• Heart disease and stroke
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