Prediabetes Range & HbA1c Readings: Why You Need to Pay Attention to Your Blood Sugar Report!

Type 2 diabetes is called a lifestyle disease, which means you acquire this condition due to unhealthy lifestyle habits and practices. But, of course, other factors can also increase one’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes – a sedentary lifestyle, a high carb-high fat diet over the years, genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and more.

However, Type 2 diabetes doesn’t happen suddenly – like waking up with a 102-degree fever or getting bruises after an injury. Instead, it happens after years of misuse and abuses your body has gone through.

But your body gives you enough cues to rectify your mistakes and take charge of your health. You go through a phase of borderline diabetes, medically termed prediabetes, before Type 2 diabetes hits you full-blown.

Prediabetes is the stage where your blood sugar levels remain higher than normal but not too high to be diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes. This stage is the red flag when your body has given you the ultimatum to take control of your health.

Most of the time, prediabetes gets diagnosed accidentally, mostly through routine blood tests. Since this condition has no symptoms. Ideally, this phase of prediabetes lasts for around 3 to 7 years.

Doctors call this window period the golden phase as this is all the time you have got to prevent or slow the progression of prediabetes into Type 2 diabetes and the dependency on medications.

Undoubtedly, a condition like prediabetes needs attention and some immediate interventions, not only because it could lead to Type 2 diabetes, but elevated sugar levels are harmful to your other major organs too.

With prediabetes, the damage to your – heart, kidneys and lungs might have already started. If it progresses into type 2 diabetes, saving these major organs could be a challenge. So, it is imperative to get serious with a diagnosis like prediabetes and get your blood sugar levels in check.

The good news is prediabetes can be reversed or prevented from progressing into full-fledged diabetes.

What are the symptoms of prediabetes?

As mentioned earlier, a condition like this has no specific symptoms, but it can be picked up during a routine blood test. Elevated sugar levels indicate prediabetes; the fasting blood sugar level, especially, is checked for the same. Fasting blood sugar is your blood sugar level in the morning recorded on an empty stomach (before you have your breakfast or eat anything). It is a great indicator of prediabetes.

The prediabetes ranges for fasting blood sugar test are as follows:

• Normal: between 70 and 99 mg per dL
• Prediabetes: between 100 and 125 mg per dL
• Diabetes: higher than 126 mg per dL.

If you are diagnosed with prediabetes, your doctor might want to check your HbA1c levels or A1c levels. This test provides an average reading of your blood sugar level over the past 3 months. The results are shown as a percentage:

• Normal: below 5.7%
• Prediabetes: between 5.7% and 6.4%
• Diabetes: 6.5% or higher.

While there aren’t any symptoms of prediabetes, there are certain risk factors for the same. Here are a few of them:

• Being obese or overweight
• Having a parent or sibling who has diabetes
• Belonging to a particular race: African American, Native American, Latin American or Asian
• Diagnosed with gestational diabetes during pregnancy
• Born to a mother who had gestational diabetes during pregnancy
• High blood pressure (more than 140/90 mm Hg)
• High cholesterol (triglyceride level higher than 250 mg per dL)
• Living with PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome

If you have any of the mentioned risk factors, it is better to get a blood sugar test done yearly or bi-yearly once you are over 30 years, even if you have no symptoms of any lifestyle-related diseases.

If you have been diagnosed with prediabetes, the best mode of treatment is to try and reverse it by incorporating corrective diet changes, regular exercise and other lifestyle modifications like sleep and stress management.

If you haven’t been practising healthy lifestyle habits for a long, it might be difficult for you to develop healthy habits overnight. This is where a little help from experts and coaches can be of help.

To reverse prediabetes, a personalised and scientific approach is necessary. This is where Fitterfly Diabetes Care Program, a digital therapeutic program for diabetes and prediabetes management comes into place.

At Fitterfly, a team of specialists, including – a nutritionist, a certified physiotherapist and a clinical psychologist, help you to achieve individual health goals with tailor-made diet and exercise plans according to your needs. In addition, regular counselling will help you feasibly align your goals to sustain them lifelong.

You can educate yourself with all the knowledge of nutrition and exercise to control your condition, but taking help from experts will make it easier for you. Remember, it is never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach; different foods raise blood sugar levels differently for different people.

With Fitterfly Diabetes Care Program, our coaches would take into account every minute detail through the Fitterfly Wellness App and a CGMS device to come up with a tailor-made nutrition plan to help reverse prediabetes.

Our expert panel of physiotherapists will guide you to get started with the right kind of exercises to avoid injuries, lose weight and control your blood pressure in the most scientific manner.

They will help you understand which exercise is the right one for you and how your blood sugar level varies post different forms of exercise – jogging, swimming, weight training, brisk walking and others.

Every year 15-20% of people with prediabetes progress to diabetes. A healthy lifestyle can help delay the onset of diabetes and help you live a diabetes-complication-free life for longer – one that is free from medication as well.

Since prediabetes is a silent condition with no symptoms, most people don’t even know they have the condition. Take the first step towards a healthy, happy lifestyle by assessing your risk. Use our prediabetes risk calculator to assess your health status.

To know more about how Fitterfly Diabetes Care Program and how it can help you smartly take control of your prediabetes,  speak to one of our counsellors.