What Factors Increase the Risk of Prediabetes?
As I said in previous articles, people with prediabetes don’t have any signs or symptoms, it is important to be aware of the risk factors and have your blood glucose levels tested by your doctor if you are at risk.
Risk Factors Under Your Control
- Your Eating Habits: Eating more calories than you need to maintain a healthy weight puts you at risk for pre-diabetes. A diet high in total fat and saturated fat, or too low in complex carbohydrates and fiber may lead to insulin resistance.
- Inactivity: Lack of physical activity limits the muscles' ability to use insulin, making it more likely that you will become insulin resistant.
- Observed Abdominal Fat: Having an "apple-shaped" figure with a large waist circumference is the strongest risk factor for prediabetes. Abdominal fat is associated with insulin resistance. Females are at risk when the waist circumference is 35 inches or more. For males, risk increases when the waist is at least 40 inches. Losing weight by changing your eating habits and increasing your physical activity will help you shrink your waist.
- Your Weight: Obese people with a BMI of 30.0 and above are five times as likely to develop prediabetes when compared with people in the normal weight range. Risk starts to increase at a BMI of 25.
- Lack of Sleep. Several recent studies have linked a lack of sleep or too much sleep to an increased risk of insulin resistance. Research suggests that regularly sleeping fewer than six hours or more than nine hours a night might up your risk of prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.
Risk Factors You Cannot Change
There are a things that we can't control. These are factors which we have no control in developing prediabetes:
- Your Age: As you get older, your body produces less insulin and becomes less sensitive to the insulin you have. You are at greater risk for prediabetes if you are over 45 years old and overweight, with a BMI of 25 or 23 for Asian Americans. If you are under 45, but are overweight, your risk increases if you have either high blood pressure, a low HDL ("good") cholesterol, high triglycerides, or some combination of the three.
- Ethnicity / Races: While prediabetes occurs in people of all races, certain ethnic groups have a higher risk than others. Diabetes is more common in African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders.
- Genetics / Family History: If either of your parents have/had type 2 diabetes, then you are more likely to get diabetes too.
- Gestational Diabetes: If you had diabetes while you were pregnant, but it went away after delivery, you have a 20 percent to 50 percent chance of developing full-blown diabetes in the next 5 to 10 years. Whether or not you had gestational diabetes, you are at greater risk if you had a baby born weighing more than 9 pounds.
- Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. For women, having polycystic ovary syndrome, is a common condition characterized by irregular menstrual periods, excess hair growth and obesity will increases the risk of diabetes.
Source & References:
- Prediabetes - Mayo Clinic. Retrieved last February 21, 2013
- Are You at Risk for Pre-diabetes? - CalorieCount.About.com. Retrieved last February 21, 2013
