Prediabetes 101: Understanding and Managing Early Diabetes Risks

Hosts Danna and Megan kick off a special series for Diabetes Awareness Month, focusing on prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Prevent T2 Lifestyle Coaching Program

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:35 Megan's Background in Diabetes Care

02:27 Understanding Prediabetes

06:21 Testing for Prediabetes

09:07 Lifestyle Changes to Manage Prediabetes

13:04 Dietary Recommendations for Prediabetes

17:14 Myth Busting: Prediabetes

18:41 Listener Questions

26:02 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to the so Frickin' Healthy podcast. I am Danna.

And I am Megan.

And today we're kicking off a special series for Diabetes Awareness Month, which is November, and we're focusing on pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes all month long. And we're going to dive into all of these topics which I have been passionate about.

If you're a listener of the show, you know that I get a little overexcited when we talk about diabetes and metabolic disease. So we want to hopefully bring some information to you.

Yes, indeed. And Megan really does know a lot of shit about diabetes. Megan, you actually spent like, what, 17 years in the diabetes cure?

Yes, I spent a long time in the blood glucose manufacturing arena, which does give me a lot of insight on how obviously the disease works. With that caveat of I am not a doctor, I am not a certified nurse diabetes educator, so I have no credentials. We are both health coaches.

And because pre diabetes and in some cases type 2 diabetes is or can be helped by lifestyle management and lifestyle behavior choices, we do have that expertise where we're bringing to this series of episodes. And yeah, and we're both certified to do this shit. You've had pre diabetics and that you've helped before, right?

Yes, I have. And I have a lot of type 2 diabetes on both sides of my family.

My dad and my grandma from my mom's side, and probably a few more pre diabetics who don't know. We'll discuss that today.

But honestly, the discussion, or mainly the only discussion around it, has been about avoiding sugar, making sure that you have some candy in hand in case of hypoglycemia. And although I grew up with it all around me, the education was pretty poor.

So I'm quite interested to hear what you're going to teach us today and hopefully help some of the, you know, still living diabetics in my family. Megan, you are the expert today because you're going to know a shit ton more than I do, and I'm just going to be here asking.

Megan's doing her little fun dance. You're such a geek. I'm here to ask the questions and bring some more outsider perspective.

I love it. I love talking with you. I love talking about diabetes. So let's dive in.

Today's episode is all about prediabetes 101, because type 2 diabetes often gets all the limelight because most people who are diagnosed with diabetes have type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is only around 10% of the population. Just to give you some Rough estimates. There's.

But pre diabetics is the diagnosis that millions of people have and almost none of them realize it. 8 out of 10 people have no idea that they're already pre diabetic.

Wow. Okay, so it's like a prequel to diabetes, basically.

Yes, it is the runner up. It is the let's get started to diabetes. It's the indicator that whatever you've been doing for years is not good for your body. Is not.

You're not doing the best for your body and your body is slowly telling you that this is not a good thing.

It's starting to give up.

Yeah. So prediabetes specifically is a condition where your blood sugar is higher than a person who doesn't have diabetes.

Actually, let me rephrase, that is higher than normal. Quote, I put in normal, somebody who has a very well functioning metabolic system, but it's not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes.

So there is a cutoff in the medical industry where it says, now you're type 2 diabetic. And I want to state, again, we're not talking about type 1 diabetics. Type 1 diabetics is a completely different story.

That is not a lifestyle problem. That is a autoimmune disease. So even though the issue is the same in terms of the outcome, the symptoms, the causes are completely different.

So we're only going to talk about type 2 diabetes. Just to reiterate at the beginning, prediabetes is that early warning system that your body is having a difficult time processing effectively.

So getting the sugar out of your blood and into your cells, and without some kind of intervention, when you're diagnosed pre diabetic, it will slowly progress to type 2 diabetes at some point.

And the most critical part, and I think for me this is the most passionate that I get about the fact that as a health coach we can really help people, is when you're in this pre diabetes zone of higher than normal, but not type 2. Yet your lifestyle is the thing that will change your projection towards type 2 diabetes. And as a health coach, that's what we deal with.

We deal with lifestyle changes to help you feel better, sleep better, de stress, all those things. But specifically in this case, pre diabetes is reversible.

And I want to make a big distinction there because once your body kind of breaks through to that type 2 space, it means that the damage that has been caused by your body not being able to metabolize the sugar has damaged your organs, sometimes irreversibly. So that's why people who've had type 2 diabetes.

Yeah, they might be able to reverse some of the symptoms, but they're probably not gonna reverse the damage. And that can then keep them in that state.

Even if they change their lifestyle, they might always have type 2 diabetes because the damage that they've done to their pancreas, which is where the insulin is produced, is done and you can't fix it. So again, that's why pre diabetes diagnosis is so important.

Okay, so it sounds like when you get the prediabetes diagnosis, you should in theory be happy because you caught it on time.

Yes, yes, it sounds horrible. And at least in US alone, there are at least 88 million adults who have prediabetes and also teenagers who are overweight.

Some help them have prediabetes. And the tricky thing is that there's really no obvious symptoms, so they don't really think anything is wrong.

That's tough. So how does a person test for it? Like, is there, is it just a blood sugar test or is it something they can do at home?

So there are a couple different ways you can do this.

If you have somebody who's a type 2 diabetic in their house and they have an old blood glucose meter laying around, you can begin to test your blood sugar in the morning.

Just when you wake up and you're fasting, that would start to give you a indication just to yourself, if that number is high, and those numbers are listed everywhere by each country, what that range should be. It's called a fasting blood glucose.

If you don't have any diabetics in your family, but you're still worried maybe because you have some of those indicators that you might have type 2 diabetes later on in life. Then the test that you're gonna wanna ask your doctor specifically for is the A1C test. That's the letter A, the number one and the letter C.

It's short for hemoglobin A1C. To put it in layman's terms, it's like you spilled coke or any kind of sugary beverage on your red blood cell and it just sticks to it.

This was how it was explained to me when I first came into the industry. Just imagine excess sugar in your blood sticks to that red blood cell and it won't let go. And so effectively, it's damaging the red blood cell.

And the A1C is the percentage of your red blood cells that have that sugar stuck to it. So it's also considered like your 3 month average blood glucose because your red blood cells turn over every three months.

So the three months ago, you do not have the same red blood cells that you have this today.

Okay.

Which is why, yeah, it is really cool. Because you can. Those red blood cells go away, they die, and you have a new opportunity.

Every single day, you have red blood cells dying, and you have a new opportunity to change your lifestyle, to help your body process blood sugar better.

I love that. That should be the end of the episode. Literally every single day, you have a new opportunity to take control over your life.

And that should be, you know, tattooed on our forehead. So tell me, what is the process of the A1C test?

It's super simple. So it's like your normal blood test.

So whenever you're going in for like your annual checkup, or maybe you do it every two years, you just need to make sure that you ask for certain. It's typically. Now it's a normal thing to look at two hours later. I think that was a really long way of saying it's a blood test. You just ask for it.

The numbers on the paper, it's a percentage. I wonder what.

I'll keep in edit. Okay, so wait, let's now get to the nitty gritty. If someone is diagnosed with pre diabetes, what are they supposed to do about it?

So that's good.

So you've gone to your doctor, you've got your blood test, and your doctor says, hey, this looks like in the range of we should be interested in this and take care of it. There are things that are in your control and out of your control.

So first of all, to understand what your risk factors are, things like being overweight, being inactive. So that could be. You could be super thin and still be inactive. That would be over 45, which, okay, now I have two of these.

Or you have a family history of diabetes. All of those can increase your risk of having diabetes. There's.

I got two out of two. You got two out of two. We're doing good, sister.

So, unfortunately, there's not very many obvious symptoms to prediabetes. So it has to be more of. You need to care about your body.

If you don't care about your body and you're not going regularly to the doctor anyway to get your regular physicals and checkups, you most likely won't see it or won't know about it until it could be too late.

So there are a few things, but not relatively, let's say, outstanding, like people who maybe are thirsty a little bit more or maybe get a little more tired, but you can Attribute that to a lot of different things. So that's why it's really important to get those blood tests done.

Okay. Okay. So it's really important to know your numbers, even if you're feeling fine.

Maybe get checked if you have a few of the precursors that Megan just mentioned.

Yeah, absolutely. It's always better to know these things early.

Once you know that you have prediabetes or that it's sneaking up on you or that it's getting to that point, you have the choice, you have the decision to make whether or not you do something about it or whether you don't do something about it. And fortunately, super fortunately, you don't need to make huge changes to your lifestyle immediately. You don't need to start doing anything radical.

We're going to get into some of that later on. It is literally just small things that you can do every day to help stop that progression and even potentially reverse it or.

Or do things that will actually contribute to.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you keep going on with your lifestyle the way it has been, you'll probably end up with two diabetes. Right.

So we don't recommend finding out that you're pre diabetic and crying over a tub of Ben and Jerry's about it, because that's not going to help.

Right.

But it is awesome to hear that there are things that people can do that are not hugely dramatic. But I do have some clients who approach me after discovering that they're pre diabetic. They feel really overwhelmed.

So sounds like a big change to a lot of people. General, just. Just that knowledge. So what do you think that they should start with?

Yeah, so first of all, they should start by educating themselves, obviously. Maybe get into a few groups where pre diabetics are there, pre diabetic support groups, talk to somebody who also has had prediabetes.

So just begin to educate yourself and get used to some of the words and really understand the disease.

Because once you understand how the disease works or what the metabolic changes are that will get you to type 2 diabetes, then you'll see how easy it is to do some things. And then what you would actually do, beyond education and awareness of what's happening to your own body, is diet.

So I don't mean to diet what you're eating. So the original Latin version of diet, exercise and stress management, those are the three big ticket items that all impact your blood sugar.

And that's what we want to impact.

Okay, so let's dig into each one of those. Let's talk about diet My favorite topic.

Yeah. Food. And it goes not without saying, but we should say it.

Is that a little plug here for health coaches in general is that a doctor is probably not going to prescribe you to visit a nutritionist or a dietitian with prediabetes. The doctor is probably going to just tell you, you look like you're running into the pre diabetes zone or you are in the pre diabetes zone.

You need to lose weight, you need to exercise more. That's what they're going to tell you. And you're going to walk out the door scared and not knowing where to turn.

And health coaches like Danna and myself and literally thousands of other health coaches are trained to help you make those lifestyle changes and hold your hand and guide you and be there for you when a doctor is not going to do that. And it's not because they don't care about you. It's just that's not in their frame of what they do for us. They don't have time to do that.

So I just wanted.

They don't necessarily have the education around it either.

Right?

I mean, yeah, coaching, that's not what they're learning.

No, you're. They're learning how to diagnose, they're learning how to treat.

They're not learning how to coach you and to understand why, help you understand why you do things that you do or don't do. And that's really what coaching is all about. Okay, so back to food or diet, the things that you eat. So it's pretty simple. I like that phrase.

It's simple but not easy sometimes. Right? Because it's simple. And you'll have heard everything we're talking about if you're anywhere in the health and wellness industry.

You've heard everything we're going to talk about today. And that's because down to.

Because it works.

Yeah, if you do it right.

Exactly.

You can't just read it. You can't just read about it and just like think, I'm going to do it and then just don't do it. Then it doesn't work. Okay, back to the food.

So foods that are high in fiber and protein and the reason why foods that are high in fiber and protein are very helpful for specifically what we're talking about pre diabetics is that it helps to keep your blood sugar from spiking. And that's the goal as a pre diabetic. You want to keep your blood sugar from looking like a roller coaster to like a little rolling hill.

You don't want Any mountains or peaks or super high roller coasters for a visual, because most people will be listening to this. And fiber foods, high in fiber. Beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables, whole foods, and then proteins.

So a lot of those whole foods have also protein in them, but also animal protein is fine.

Those two things are harder for your gut to digest, and therefore, the longer it takes your gut to digest, that flattens out your blood sugar while you're eating. Okay, so whole grains, vegetables, lean proteins. And then, of course, the obvious is to cut back on processed foods, specifically processed carbs.

But actually, a lot of processed foods, even if they say they're low carb, could have high inflammation oils and other things in them that are not doing your body a service. And then, of course, sugary drinks, even alcohol also has sugar in it, reducing those.

And that doesn't mean you have to be a teetotaler and not have any drinks. But if you were having a beer a night, maybe cut it back to a beer every other night.

If you were having five beers a night, maybe cut it back to one beer a night. You see what I mean? You don't have to do drastic things.

Any step towards the right direction is the right step forward. Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I should, I should. I should trademark that. So what I'm hearing is more whole foods, less processed packaged food, like products.

I mean, it does sound manageable and totally up our alley. It's not something that needs to be too drastic, as you say. But just trying to go towards that direction is always going to be great.

Little changes over time make the biggest difference.

Okay, I know. Let's take a quick myth busting minute. Yes. You ready for it?

I am.

Okay. So, Megan, I've heard a lot of people think pre diabetes is not a big deal. Is that true or false?

If you don't know about it, it's not a big deal. It is. It's a big deal because it is the big neon sign that says you're not doing the right thing for your body.

And it is also the last exit on the highway towards type 2 diabetes. So it is super important that if you get that diagnosis that you start to do something about it. It is very important.

Right. Okay, that's good to know. Another myth. And I think you. You did touch it a little bit.

But people do say that you'll feel symptoms if you're pre diabetic. True or false?

Obviously, some people could say that they feel symptoms. We talked about a little bit of lethargy or tiredness. So these are two very common type 2 diabetic indicators.

If people have type 2 diabetes, they might urinate a lot and therefore also drink a lot. It is not something that you'd be aware of even if you have type 2 diabetes.

Some people go for years without even knowing they have type 2 diabetes because the symptoms are not so strong. But that doesn't mean that the damage is not happening inside the body.

Gotcha. Okay, awesome. Thanks, Megan.

You're welcome, Anna.

We just got to our next segment, which is listeners questions. And Megan, you know how excited I get when we have our listeners contribute to our podcast.

Yes.

So I have one question from our fake listener, Emily, though she could be real if you listener, leave us a message. So anyways, Emily says, I was recently diagnosed with prediabetes. I feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

What are some changes I can start with?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a question I see over and over again. I do have a prediabetes support group on Facebook called I'm diagnosed with prediabetes now what?

Which I think is very apt because that's exactly what they're coming for. And even though Emily is a fake listener, it is very much a real issue with people who are just finding out that they're diagnosed with prediabetes.

Simple things like do a food audit. If you wanted to, just take a glance without changing anything, like maybe for a week, just write down what you're eating.

Do a little food journal to bring awareness, because Danna and I, we talk all the time about knowing yourself better. And before you start experimenting with your lifestyle, maybe first take some stock of what your lifestyle entails.

So do a little journaling on what you like to eat.

Do a little journaling of your exercise, maybe how many minutes you walk, because then you have a baseline of, okay, this is what I'm doing currently. And then super simple. You could say, it looks like I eat pasta four nights a week because it's easy, it tastes good.

Who doesn't love a big bowl of pasta? Come on. But then a good swap for that would be, for example, switching from a wheat pasta to, like, a lentil pasta or a black bean pasta.

Right?

And you have to also do a little bit of mind shift. You have to say, this is not wheat pasta. This is lentil pasta. This is black bean pasta.

It's not going to taste like wheat pasta, but I can still put all my favorite sauces with it. And it's giving me more protein and more fiber and my body Will love me more for it. Or maybe you do half and half.

Maybe you say like half wheat pasta, half lentil pasta. Something as simple as this is just not eating as much wheat pasta. You see what I'm saying?

So it really depends on where you are to where you want to start. And we both went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And what I loved about that school was don't tell your clients what they shouldn't have.

Put more in. Crowd out. That's what they were saying.

Crowd out the things that you know you shouldn't be eating with other things that you know you should be eating. So it's less about deprivation.

So doing those simple swaps and then also just adding some more vegetables, like pick a vegetable you love and just be like, I'm going to eat a cup of that vegetable at every meal or every other meal. Oh, wait, now I have two vegetables I like. I'm gonna eat a cup of this vegetable and a cup of that vegetable. That's super simple. And get frozen shit.

Get frozen shit. You just have to microwave, make it super easy. And then take a walk after dinner, take a walk after lunch. 10 minutes, that's it.

Just take a 10 minute walk. Those two things alone will help you drastically.

Right, I don't think we're gonna stop saying this, but really, don't forget to take it one step at a time. Decide what is the one change that'll be the easiest to do and then start with that one.

Don't tackle the one that you think is gonna be the hardest one. It's going to deflate you. And that's not fun. You know, the CH changes don't all have to happen overnight. Okay, so here's another question from.

Let's call him Carlos. Carlos asks pre diabetes, a guarantee that I'll develop type 2 diabetes. Is there any way I can prevent that from happening?

Obviously, I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to tell you.

Why aren't you thanking Carlos?

Excuse me? Oh, sorry. Thanks, Carlos, for a great question. I love, I love our fake listeners. He can't be offended if he's fake. Okay, but the short answer is no.

But the long answer is it depends, right? Because I don't know. I don't know you. I don't know you fake Carlos.

And it could be that you live in this pre diabetes limbo for the rest of your life. It's not a good. It's still not a good place to be because your body is not working at its most efficient.

But I can't tell you without a doubt that you're gonna get type 2 diabetes, but I can say with relative certainty if you continue to keep doing what you're doing, you'll most likely end up with type 2 diabetes. And what you can do to prevent that from happening is to not keep doing what you're doing. Right. Did you keep doing what you're doing? Yes.

If you don't, then hopefully not. Right.

There's a really good saying. I love it. Let's see that I get it right. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. Right.

So perfect. Love it.

And I do love how empowering it is to know that we can actually influence our health, especially with something as serious as diabetes. That is something that we really need to keep in mind.

We discover that we are pre diabetic to understand that you still have that power to help your body.

Yeah, there's a lot of type 2 diabetics who do a lot of lifestyle changes and they get off medication, they get off all of the extra things that they have to do, and they manage it purely with lifestyle.

As I said at the beginning of the episode, they still have that damage that's done to their body, but now they've effectively changed their lifestyle to manage it. And moving forward, they know what they can and can't do. And you know what?

Those people who have done that are the people who really want to learn about themselves and take the time. Gretchen Rubin has this great quote. What you manage, you measure.

If you want to manage your condition, if you want to manage your household, if you want to manage anything, you need to measure it, you need to pay attention to it. If you don't pay attention to it, who's going to do it for you? Nobody. Nobody's going to hold your hand and do it for you.

Unless you're a multimillionaire who has people who you pay to do that for you.

But still, in the end, you are still your own person and you need to take responsibility for your body and therefore have the compassion and the self love to make those changes and to prolong your life and prolong your life in a way that you're not going to be a type 2 diabetic where you're blind or you have a foot amputated or you can't feel your fingers anymore. These are all the things that sneak up over time. If you don't love yourself enough to make those changes, that's a completely different topic.

But awareness of going like, why am I not paying attention? Why am I not doing something? And asking those hard questions with yourself. Okay, we gotta look.

We took a little turn there, but I feel like that was important to say too.

No, that was good.

Love yourself enough to take care of your body.

Yes, please. And thank you. I mean, that is super important. Pre diabetes or not. In full honesty. Thank you so much, Megan. This was great.

And listeners, remember, knowing your numbers and making small changes can make a big difference.

And stay tuned. As we mentioned, these are our episodes for Diabetes Awareness Month. World Diabetes Day is November 14th.

Stay tuned to our next episode where we actually dig in a little bit more to the pre diabetes diet. I'd also like to mention that I have a program called Prevent T2. Not my curricula, it is actually curricula.

It was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the usa, the cdc.

And they put together this huge, wonderful year long curriculum that is called a lifestyle coaching program that focuses a lot on movement and weight loss. I've developed this into a podcast format because I feel like that is a very easy way to deliver it to people for free.

So if you are interested in that, check it out. It's called Prevent T2. You can find it on all the major podcasting platforms.

And yeah, then you'll hear my voice again in another podcast helping you through the whole prediabetes thing.

That's Megan killing it. Go check her out. Go check her program out. They can't even speak. And see you next time.

See you. Bye. Is that okay? Did I talk too much?