Prediabetes - a diagnosis that helps or hinders?

The diagnosis of prediabetes was definitely not around when I first started looking after patients with Type 2 Diabetes (DM) in General Practice, but this became more common in the early 2000s. It had previously been referred to as impaired fasting glucose, or impaired glucose tolerance and was part of the metabolic syndrome.

There were some critics at the time arguing that we were over-medicalising and labelling healthy people with a ‘disease’ that didn't really exist and causing unnecessary anxiety and problems with health insurance and even employment. This was also diverting huge amounts of funds that could be used to treat diabetes and fuelled moves by the fitness and pharmaceutical industries to target individuals when in fact not all of them will go on to develop diabetes.

But of course, it also makes sense to prevent somebody from developing a disease with such enormous costs to the individual and our health service.

Prediabetes is the label given to the group of people who have higher than normal blood sugars, but are not yet in the range that falls into the diabetic range.

The idea is that by actively looking for this group of patients, we can use lifestyle improvement programmes to prevent them from developing full-blown diabetes and save many patients from the complications of this disease.

In the UK, around 7 million people are estimated to have prediabetes and thus have a higher risk of developing diabetes. Added to 4.4 million people already diagnosed with diabetes, these numbers are linked to the growth of obesity, population growth and longevity.

We do know from the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programmes that people with prediabetes who attend the programme are 20-30% less likely to develop DM over their lifetime compared to people who were not offered this support, and that this figure increases for those over 60. 

The bonus of helping people to change their lifestyle is that it will also decrease their overall risk of developing metabolic syndrome, so high BP, abnormal lipid profiles, fatty liver, CHD, strokes, and obesity. 

There is much to be gained from optimising your metabolic health at any stage. 

Isn't that exactly what we so passionately believe here at Seren Health Coaching? 

Ultimately, we have developed our kickstart programme to help people do just this.

If you are ready to start making these changes - why not start today?