But what if type 2 diabetes could be reversed? What if intensive lifestyle and dietary changes could improve it? Pre-diabetes and diabetes exist on a continuum and both dramatically increase the risk of heart attacks, stroke, cancer, infertility, sexual dysfunction, depression and dementia. You don’t have to get diabetes to be at risk for all those problems. That is why it is so important to get your doctor to diagnose pre-diabetes early and implement an intensive lifestyle program .
By 2020, one in two Americans will have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Tragically, physicians will miss the diagnosis for ninety percent with pre-diabetes or diabetes. Increasingly small children as young as eight are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (formerly called adult onset diabetes). They are having strokes at 15 years old and needing cardiac bypasses at 25 year old.
The Significant Seven Risk Factors
You may be at risk if you have
- extra belly fat
- a family history of diabetes
- gestational diabetes
- an at risk ethnic group (Asian, Hispanic, African American, Native American, Middle Eastern)
- high triglycerides (> 150 mg/dl)
- low HDL (< 50 mg/dl)
- high blood pressure.
