What’s your game plan for preventing diabetes for yourself or your family? Did you realize that before people develop type 2 diabetes (previously called late on-set diabetes), they almost always have "pre-diabetes."

A person has a condition known as pre-diabetes when the blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. At least 16 million people in the United States(15.6% of the population), ages 40 to 74, have pre-diabetes! Recent research has shown that some long-term damage to the body, especially the heart and circulatory system, may already be happening during pre-diabetes.

People with pre-diabetes don’t often have symptoms. In fact millions of people actually have diabetes and don’t know it because symptoms develop so gradually, people often don’t recognize them. Symptoms of diabetes include unusual thirst, frequent desire to urinate, blurred vision or being tired most of the time.

     Research has shown that if you take action to control blood glucose when you have pre-diabetes, you can delay or sometimes prevent type 2 diabetes from ever developing. Diet and exercise work best to delay diabetes. Just 30 minutes a day of moderate physical activity, coupled with a 5 – 10% reduction in body weight, produces a 58% reduction in your risk of diabetes.