Did you know?
According to the CDC:
- More than 34 million people in the United States have diabetes, and 1 in 4 of them don’t know they have it.
- More than 88 million US adults—1 in 3—have prediabetes, and 90% of them don’t know they have it
- Are you at risk? Take the risk test to find out!
What Is Prediabetes?
Prediabetes is a serious health condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough yet to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes. Approximately 96 million American adults—more than 1 in 3—have prediabetes. Of those with prediabetes, more than 80% don’t know they have it.
Prediabetes puts you at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. The good news is that if you have prediabetes, the CDC-led National Diabetes Prevention Program can help you make lifestyle changes to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.
Toolkit for Diabetes Prevention
This toolkit’s main objective is to promote type 2 diabetes prevention.
Before developing Type 2 diabetes, most people have prediabetes, meaning their blood sugar is higher than normal but not high enough yet for a diabetes diagnosis. Prediabetes is very common -more than 88 million US adults live with it, though more than 84% of them don’t know they do. For more information on how to prevent type 2 diabetes in children and adults, read On Your Way to Preventing Type 2 Diabetes, a guide from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
What Causes Prediabetes?
Insulin is a hormone made by your pancreas that acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells for use as energy. If you have prediabetes, the cells in your body don’t respond normally to insulin.
Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond. Eventually your pancreas can’t keep up, and your blood sugar rises, setting the stage for prediabetes—and type 2 diabetes down the road.
Credit: Serene Alzarrad, MU MPH
