The good news is that making lifestyle changes can help prevent or delay type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.

What Causes Prediabetes? Insulin, a hormone made by your pancreas, acts like a key to let blood sugar into cells to use as energy. When you have prediabetes, the cells in your body don’t respond normally to insulin. Your pancreas makes more insulin to try to get cells to respond. Eventually your pancreas can’t keep up and blood sugar rises above a healthy level. This sets the stage for prediabetes—and type 2 diabetes down the road.

Screening and Diagnosis. You can have prediabetes for years with no obvious symptoms, so it often goes undetected until serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes show up. It’s important to talk to your doctor about getting your blood sugar tested if you have any of the risk factors for prediabetes:

• Being overweight
• Being 45 years or older
• Having a parent, brother, or sister with type 2 diabetes
• Having obstructive sleep apnea
• Having a waist size larger than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men
• Being physically active less than 3 times a week
• Ever having gestational diabetes
• Having polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
• Regular use of tobacco

Race and ethnicity are also a factor: African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, Pacific Islanders, and some Asian Americans are at higher risk.

You can assess your risk with an interactive Prediabetes Risk Test on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

A simple blood test is used for diagnosis. A fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dL or an A1C result between 5.7 and 6.4% indicates pre-diabetes.

Prevention. If you are currently at low risk for prediabetes, these healthy habits will keep your risk low.

• Get at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week.
• Maintain a healthy weight range.
• Eat healthy foods, including lots of veggies and fruits.
• Drink more water and fewer sugar-sweetened beverages.
• Avoid smoking cigarettes.

Treatment. Making lasting lifestyle changes can lower your risk of developing diabetes by as much as 58% for those under 60 and by as much as 71% for those over age 60.

Eat Healthier

The plate method is a simple, visual way to make sure you are eating healthier.

Start with a 9-inch dinner plate:

• Fill half with non-starchy vegetables, like salad, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrots.
• Fill one quarter with a lean protein, like chicken, beans, tofu, or eggs.
• Fill one quarter with whole grains, starchy foods such as potatoes, corn, peas, brown rice, whole grain pasta, or cooked dried beans.

You could also include a cup of skim milk or fortified soymilk, fruit, and a drink that has low or no calories (water, sparkling water, unsweetened iced tea, or coffee without sugar).

Find Time to Move

• Aim for at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week.
• Avoid too much sitting—take a two-minute fitness break every 30 minutes.
• Add in 30 minutes of resistance and strength training twice a week.

Manage Stress

We can’t always change the stressors in our life, but we can learn ways to manage our reaction to them. We all have different ways of coping. Some things that have been helpful to others include meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, walking in nature, writing in a journal, or seeking help from a trained counselor.

Get Your ZZZZZZ

Sleep provides restorative functions like muscle growth, tissue repair, and protein synthesis. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need about seven and a half hours of sleep. Poor sleep takes a toll on our bodies, contributing to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

Practice healthy sleep hygiene behaviors like following a set bedtime and wake-time, even on weekends; avoiding napping or limiting them to less than 30 minutes; and avoiding caffeine, alcohol, and heavy meals two to three hours before bedtime.

Quit Smoking or Chewing Tobacco.

High levels of nicotine can lessen the effectiveness of insulin, causing smokers to need more insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. Talk to your doctor about finding ways to quit.

By adopting these lifestyle changes, you can reduce your risk for developing diabetes and other chronic diseases. You can find additional information from the National Diabetes Prevention Program.

The post Prediabetes: Screening, Prevention, and Treatment appeared first on University Health News.

Weight bias is defined by the Obesity Action Coalition as “negative attitudes, beliefs, judgments, stereotypes, and discriminatory acts aimed at individuals simply because of their weight.” Stigma is defined as strong feelings of disapproval based on a distinguishing characteristic; in this context, it is weight-related.

Why Are We Talking About This? Weight bias impacts people across the weight spectrum and has increased by twothirds in the last decade. People classified as overweight or obese have been victims of weight bias, but it also impacts underweight people and those with eating disorders.

Social media has taken body shaming to new heights. Ninety percent of elementary school children have witnessed weight-related bullying and two-thirds of children with overweight and obesity report being teased. Youth who report frequent bullying are at increased risk of suicide-related behaviors as well as negative physical and mental health issues.

Weight bias is a manifestation of social inequity because people in “larger bodies” or very thin bodies are often not treated equally to those considered “normal sized.” They may be treated unfairly at school, at work, in the media, in relationships with family and friends, and in the healthcare system.

Weight bias is dehumanizing and damaging. It can be overt or subtle, is associated with adverse physical and psychological health outcomes,
and promotes a social norm that marginalizes people. The stigma associated with weight has been shown to cause some of the negative health outcomes with excess weight rather than the excess weight itself.

Perceptions Impact Attitudes. Many people still believe that overweight and obesity can be prevented by self-control. They believe that individual non-compliance explains failures at weight loss and weight regain and that obesity is a personal choice instead of a chronic disease.

In numerous studies across a wide range of industries and businesses, individuals affected by overweight or obesity are characterized as lazy, undisciplined, unattractive, unmotivated, incompetent, non-compliant, and sloppy.

These demeaning stereotypes can lead to unfair treatment, depression, injustice, barriers to healthcare, and impaired quality of life (see table).

What Can We Do About Weight Bias?

• Recognize our own biases. Ask yourself what assumptions you make based on weight regarding a person’s character, intelligence, professional success, or health.
• Use respectful language when talking about people affected by overweight, obesity, or underweight.
• Speak up if you hear someone teasing or bullying someone about their weight or telling “fat” jokes.
• Be an advocate in your workplace and health care settings.
• If you have been the target of weight bias or bullying, let people know their words and actions are hurtful and unfair.
• Support policy-level changes at the state and federal level to prohibit discrimination based on weight.

The post Weight Stigma and Bias appeared first on University Health News.