Being told by your doctor that you have borderline diabetes can be a scary thing. It's a life changing situation. But, every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are being told just that as the number of diabetes cases continually rises. Currently, there are over 18 million known case of diabetes in the U.S. that have diabetes. It's estimated that there's approximately 6 million more people that have diabetes and don't know it. And it remains a serious health problem costing patients billions of dollars in health care every year.
Borderline diabetes, also known as pre-diabetes, is a condition where a person has higher glucose levels than normal, but not enough to be diagnosed as diabetic. For many people this is a symptom-free disease, so most people with pre-diabetes are unaware that they have. In a person without diabetes, the body will produce insulin to help the cells break down food into energy. In diabetics and pre-diabetics, however, either the body is unable to create insulin or it is unable to utilize the insulin. This is one reason why people with borderline diabetes tend to be tired much of the time. They are eating, but their body is unable to break down the food into usable energy.
Many doctors have stopped using the term borderline diabetes to describe this condition as, in their minds, a person who exhibits the symptoms of pre-diabetes is, in truth diabetic. and they see no real medical reason to obfuscate the diagnosis. They also feel that telling a person that he or she has borderline diabetes will cause the person to not take the diagnosis seriously - since it is only borderline. Others feel that the condition of these patients is more accurately described as insulin resistant or impaired glucose tolerance. Other doctors, however, still use the term and find it useful to keep the distinction between pre-diabetes and diabetes.
For medical care physicians that continue to use the term, borderline diabetes is diagnosed when a person's glucose level, as determined by glucose tests, fall between 100 to 125 milligrams per deciliter.
Unfortunately, in most cases, a person who has borderline diabetes will see the disease progress to diabetes. In some cases, however, with a change of eating habits and other healthy lifestyle changes, the disease will be reversed.
Many health experts believe that pre-diabetes is a preventable disease. Studies have shown a distinct correlation between the increase in the amount of fast foods that we eat and the new incidences of type II diabetes. Likewise, there is a correlation between our increasingly sedentary lifestyles with increases in the number of people diagnosed with diabetics. Making the defeat of diabetes even more urgent is that a person with pre-diabetes or diabetes is at greater risk for a host of other diseases including heart disease, stroke, liver disease, and more.
Luckily, researchers have begun to identify and catalog the many risk factors that predispose one towards developing diabetes. Hopefully, in the near future, diabetes will be looked upon as a long forgotten disease of the past.
Alice Saracho is webmaster and writer of http://www.diabetescausestreatments.com Visit her site and find articles on symptoms of borderline diabetes as well as other information and products regarding diabetes.
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