Jo’s Cafe

 Fifty-four million Americans - that’s one in six of us — have pre-diabetes and most don’t even realize it. Mark Schutta, MD, medical director of the Penn Rodebaugh Diabetes Center, is urging at-risk patients to be proactive and ask your doctor to give you a simple blood test for pre-diabetes - to arm yourself with information before the damage is done. It means you have blood glucose levels that are higher than normal and you could one day reach a high enough level that you would be diagnosed with having diabetes.  Source

 You should be screened for pre-diabetes if:
– You have a known family history of diabetes.
– You are African American, Latino, Native American, Asian American or Pacific Islander.
– While pregnant, you developed gestational diabetes.
– You delivered a baby who weighed more than nine pounds.
– You have high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, are overweight.

Schutta explains there are two kinds of blood tests you can request, “The first is a fasting plasma glucose test, in which your glucose levels measured when you have not been eating. The other is an oral glucose tolerance test which introduces glucose into your system, challenging your beta cells to make insulin by testing your body’s acute insulin response to glucose.”

Schutta says the numbers are clear. If your blood glucose level, two hours after receiving oral glucose, is over 200 milligrams per deciliter, you are considered to be diabetic. Anything between 141-199 is considered to be pre-diabetic. Again, Schutta stresses that if you have pre-diabetes, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to develop diabetes - if you take the proper steps now to avoid getting the fifth deadliest disease in America.

Jo’s Morning glucose reading: 91