Half of All American Adults Will Develop Pre-Diabetes

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one out of three Americans 20 and older have pre-diabetes, a condition in which your glucose, or blood sugar, levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as full-blown diabetes.

For those with pre-diabetes, which are about 86 million Americans, if no lifestyle changes are made, 15% to 30% will go on to develop type 2 diabetes within five years. This again is according to CDC data.

These numbers are already dismal, but new data from a large study out of The Netherlands predicts the problem is only going to get worse.

Nearly Half of Adults May Develop Prediabetes:

After tracking and analyzing data from about 10,000 adults for a period of 15 years, researchers found that nearly half of 45-year-olds will develop pre-diabetes. A fasting blood glucose level of below 108 milligrams per deciliter or less is considered normal or healthy. If the fasting blood glucose level is 108 to 128 mg/dl, this is considered pre-diabetic.

The Hemoglobin A1C blood test is a more recent way to determine diabetes or pre-diabetes. The hemoglobin A1C blood test indicates the average blood glucose levels over the past several months and can be a better indicator of diabetes or pre-diabetes than a single blood glucose reading. Diabetes is diagnosed by a hemoglobin A1C score of 6.4 or more, while pre-diabetes is diagnosed by a hemoglobin A1C score between 5.7 to 6.4.

The silver lining to this finding is that pre-diabetes can typically be corrected by altering your lifestyle. A pre-diabetes diagnosis does not mean you’re 100% destined to develop type 2 diabetes.

Last year, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that more than 29 million Americans were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a statistic researchers predicted in 2001 wouldn’t be reached until 2050.

Processed Food & Diabetes:

Why are rates of type 2 diabetes skyrocketing? It’s largely diet-related.
Reducing the intake of processed foods, which are high in added sugars is a huge step in the right direction. You should try to keep your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day, which is about six teaspoons.

If you have signs of insulin resistance such as pre-diabetes, hypertension, obesity, or heart disease, you would be wise to limit your total daily fructose consumption to 15 grams or less, until your weight and other health conditions have normalized.

The research clearly shows that once you reach above 18% of your daily calories from sugar, there’s a two-fold increase in metabolic harm that promote pre-diabetes and diabetes.

Reversing a Diagnosis of Pre-diabetes in 11 Steps:

1. Swap out processed foods, all forms of sugar, as well as all grains, for whole, fresh food.

2. Eat moderate amounts of high-quality protein from meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes and nuts. When selecting animal-based protein, be sure to opt for organically raised, grass-fed or pastured meats, eggs and dairy. Doing this will avoid potential health complications caused by genetically engineered animal feed, antibiotics and pesticides.

Those that are aggressively exercising and pregnant women should have about 25% more protein, but most people rarely need more than 70 grams of protein a day.

3. Eat As much high-quality healthy fat as you want. Those fats are saturated and monounsaturated, NOT POLYUNSATURATED! Contrary to what you have been told, fat is not the enemy, but fried foods, transfats and oxidized fats are. For optimal health, most people need upwards of 50 to 85% of their daily calories in the form of healthy fats. Good sources of healthy fats include; coconuts and coconut oil, avocados, organic butter from grass fed cows, nuts and animal fats. Fats are high in calories, while being small in terms of volume. So when you look at your plate, the largest volume should be vegetables.

4. Eat as many non-starchy vegetables as you want.

5. Exercise on a regular basis. I recommend high intensity interval training (HIIT). Studies have shown that exercise, even without weight loss, increases insulin sensitivity. HIIT has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity by as much as 24% in just four weeks.

6. Improve your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. Today’s Western diet has far too many processed fats and damaged omega-6 fats. It also contains far too little omega-3 fats. The main sources of omega-6 fats are corn, soy, canola, safflower, peanut and sunflower oils. The first two are typically genetically engineered as well, which further complicates matters. The optimal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats is 1:1. Our ratio has deteriorated to between 20:1 and 50:1 in favor of omega-6 fats. This lopsided ratio has serious health consequences.

To remedy this, reduce your consumption of vegetable oils, which means not cooking with them and also avoiding processed foods. Increase your intake of animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil and wild caught salmon. High amounts of vegetable-based omega-3 is also found in flaxseed oil and walnut oil.

7. Maintain optimal vitamin D levels year-round. Evidence strongly supports the notion that vitamin D is highly beneficial for diabetes and pre-diabetes. The ideal way to optimize your vitamin D level is by getting regular sun exposure. You can also consider oral supplementation with regular vitamin D monitoring to confirm that you are taking enough vitamin D to get your blood levels into the therapeutic range of 50 to 70 ng/ml. For adults not exposed to much sunshine, I recommend an oral supplement of 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day.

Also, please note that if you take supplemental vitamin D3, you create an increased demand for vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is essential to work in conjunction with vitamin D3 to get the calcium into the bones and teeth and not into the blood vessels and soft tissues. For adults, I recommend an oral supplement of 100 mcg of vitamin K2 in the MK7 form per day.

8. Get adequate high-quality sleep every night. Insufficient sleep appears to raise stress and blood sugar, encouraging insulin and leptin resistance and weight gain. In one 10-year long study of 70,000 diabetes-free women, researchers found that women who slept less than five hours or more than nine hours each night, were 34% more likely to develop diabetes symptoms than women who slept seven to eight hours each night.

9. Maintain a healthy body weight. If you incorporate the diet and lifestyle changes suggested above you will greatly improve your insulin and leptin sensitivity and a healthy body weight should follow in time.

10. Incorporate intermittent fasting. This strategy limits you to eat during an 8 hour window each day. This will usually mean eating breakfast and lunch, or eating lunch and dinner. It is difficult to eat 3 meals within 8 hours. Intermittent fasting effectively mimics the eating habits of our ancestors, who did not have access to grocery stores or food around the clock. Research indicates that this cycling produces a number of biochemical benefits, including improved insulin/leptin sensitivity, lowered triglycerides and other biomarkers for health, as well as weight loss.

Intermittent fasting is an effective way to shed unwanted fat and eliminate your sugar cravings. Keep up your intermittent fasting schedule until your insulin/leptin resistance improves, or your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol ratios and blood sugar normalizes. After that, you only need to do it “as needed” to maintain your healthy state.

11. Optimize your gut health. Your gut is a living ecosystem, full of both good bacteria and bad. Multiple studies have shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than lean people. The more good bacteria you have, the stronger your immune system will be and the better your body will function overall. Optimizing your gut flora can be accomplished by regularly eating fermented foods, organic cheeses, organic miso and high quality unsweetened yogurt.

If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic, you should discuss these strategies with your doctor prior to implementation. It is a good idea to make sure that you are healthy enough to implement some of these steps, such as exercise or intermittent fasting.

It is also always a good idea to ease into any new health or fitness regimen, in order to see how your body is handling it. A slow gradient is a better idea than blasting full steam ahead! Slower changes are easier physically as well as psychologically on you. Slower changes will also give you a higher probability of achieving your goals.

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