Has your doctor told you that you’re prediabetic? You should take prediabetes seriously as it’s a warning sign.
The alarm bells send clear signals. Your body is trying to tell you that if you don’t change your ways, you will develop full-blown diabetes.
You can monitor your blood sugar levels at home, or your doctor will run a hemoglobin panel that measures your A1C levels. According to Diabetes Alert, the acronym for A1C stands for glycated hemoglobin. This test will evaluate your blood sugar levels over the past three months to give you a score.
The target is to keep your A1C below 7, but doctors fret when their patients have a number between 5.7 and 6.4. It’s because these medical experts have seen people make the jump from prediabetes to a person with diabetes in a short matter of time.
How Serious Is Type 2 Diabetes?
Your blood becomes thicker when the glucose in your body is out of whack, which can increase your risk of blood clots, a heart attack, or a stroke. Here are some other things that commonly happen to those with diabetes:
- High blood pressure
- Elevated cholesterol levels
- Gum disease
- Poor brain health
- ED or erectile dysfunction
- Hearing Loss
- Frequent urinary tract infections
- Numerous fungal infections
- Sleep Apnea
- Cataracts and other visual difficulties
- Kidney Disease and, ultimately, failure
- Neuropathy
- Amputations
Nothing will if this list of possible eye-opening complications doesn’t stir you to make changes. Diabetes is severe, and it can take your life.
Thirteen Ways to Reverse Prediabetes
Now that you’re fully aware of this disease’s complications, it’s time to be proactive. You can fix things, and there is time to reverse this situation. Here are some behaviors that you can change that will make a significant impact on your glucose numbers.
1. Bulk Up on Fiber
Fiber is one of the best ways to combat diabetes. First, it helps to fill you up so that you eat less, and second, it helps to stabilize blood sugars. There are two kinds of fiber, soluble and insoluble.
Insoluble foods like cashews, peanuts, beans, oats, apples, quinoa, grains, and lentils are delicious. Soluble fiber is a powder you put into water and does a great job of lowering A1C levels.
2. Cut Out High Sugar Fruits
It’s okay to eat fruit while you have diabetes, regardless of popular beliefs. However, you must choose lower sugar varieties or limit the high sugar vegetation. Berries are an excellent source of nourishment without a ton of sugar. Consider raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries, which are all great for you.
However, the highest sugary fruits are bananas, mangos, watermelon, pineapple, oranges, grapes, figs, and cherries. Don’t tell yourself that you can never have these items, but remind yourself that limiting these foods is best.
3. Toss the White Bread
White bread is highly processed and has too many additives. White flour is a big issue as it turns to starch inside the body, which turns to sugar. However, it would help if you didn’t get caught up in the advertising schemes that anything labeled as “whole grains” is good for you, either.
Make sure you take time to see what is in your bread. Wheat bread and those made with seeds are often a better choice, but they don’t have the same soft and gooey texture as the white varieties. Still, the high fiber content helps to keep your sugar numbers in check.
4. Get Moving to Help Reverse Prediabetes
Sometimes it’s not as much as what you eat as it is the fact that your lifestyle is sedentary. Remember that you shouldn’t exercise if your glucose is above 250 mg/dl or too low. Thankfully, many programs can help you lose weight and get your sugar levels where they need to be.
5. Avoid Potatoes
Who doesn’t love a good bowl of mashed potatoes or a large baked potato loaded with goodies? Sadly, potatoes are like eating pure sugar as their high starch content turns to sugar in your body. If you have a craving for a potato, then you should try the sweet potato as it’s loaded with fiber and nutrients that a diabetic needs.
6. Get in Shape
According to the National Institute of Health, more than eighty percent of people with diabetes are overweight. You can quickly reverse your numbers by dropping your body fat.
7. Avoid Carbohydrates
There are many benefits to lowering your carbohydrate intake. However, you may be wary of using fad diets that won’t last. It would help to change your eating habits to avoid contracting this disease. Sadly, many foods you love are probably not good for you. Stay under 225-325 grams of carbs daily, as the Mayo Clinic recommends.
8. Read the Labels
Make a habit of reading the labels when your grocery shopping. If you do any “click list” grocery ordering services, they also offer all the labels online for you to see. Avoid trans or saturated fat, heavy corn syrup, molasses, dextran, maltose, inverted or regular sugars, and malt syrup. All these things are not good for you.
9. Load Up on Healthy Fats Like Fish and Avocados
Healthy fats are good for prediabetes, but they’re also good for your heart. They help to absorb nutrients into the body and have a negligible effect on blood sugar levels. They help to fill your stomach fully, so you’re not searching for something to eat an hour later.
10. Treat Sleep Apnea Along With the Prediabetes
It sounds bizarre, but your sleep can have a great deal to do with your insulin resistance. When you have sleep apnea, you stop breathing throughout the night.
Some clues that you’re suffering from this condition include loud snoring, choking and gasping for air, excessive sleepiness in the daytime, headaches upon waking and being told by your partner to stop breathing during the night.
You can improve your insulin levels by simply wearing a device that helps your airways remain open during sleep.
11. Flush Your System with Water
When you drink more water, you go to the bathroom more often. The kidneys are responsible for flushing impurities from your system, so the more water you drink, the more glucose you lose. Anyone with diabetes will tell you that drinking water is essential for keeping your sugar levels balanced.
If you regularly consume juice and soda, turn to water as it benefits the body. Plus, soda and juice are loaded with sugars, which someone with prediabetes doesn’t need.
12. Work with A Nutritionist to Better Manage Prediabetes
Working with a nutritionist can be incredibly beneficial when you have a condition like prediabetes. It’s tricky to learn what foods you can and can’t eat with a glucose problem. Though your physician may try to guide you in the right direction, they don’t have all the specific training of a registered dietician.
One of the benefits of a dietician is that they can help you make a specific meal plan centered around the foods you love. It would help if you learned that there are healthy foods that you will like and new and exciting ways to create dishes for your health. Remember, your goal is to learn how to stabilize your blood sugars to control your glucose with diet.
Thankfully, it’s not difficult to eliminate what’s wrong and focus on healthy food choices.
13. Stop Smoking
Smoking is bad for you as it releases harmful toxins into your body. The smoke from cigarettes makes it hard to breathe and constricts your blood vessels. You can die from oral and lung cancer because of smoking, but it can also affect your blood sugar levels.
The stimulating drug nicotine found in cigarettes directly affects your blood sugar levels. According to the Centers for Disease and Control, smoking cigarettes causes inflammation, which causes the body to stop responding to insulin, making you resistant.
Final Thoughts on Making Lifestyle Changes to Reverse Your Prediabetes
To some, being diagnosed with prediabetes is a wake-up call that it’s time to change their lifestyle. The great thing about type II diabetes is that it can be reversed. Genetics plays a significant role, but your glucose levels are dictated by the foods you eat and your sedentary lifestyle.
Since most of those who have this type of diabetes are overweight, it’s time to take action to prevent it from turning into a full-blown disease. Diabetes is a very troublesome condition to manage, and it’s expensive. It will affect every aspect of your life.
Being told that you have prediabetes might be a shock, but it’s the jolt you need to stimulate you to make necessary changes. Do you want to prick your finger four or more times a day to monitor your sugar, among all the other things required of you? Now is the time to alter your lifestyle.
Community
