Diabetes Educator shares six changes that can jumpstart your prediabetes reversal journey.As the name suggests, Prediabetes is the stage right before you develop type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, over the past five years, cases of prediabetes have increased by 11% in India, which has become a cause of great concern for health professionals. There is good news, though! Prediabetes can be reversed! Impaired Glucose Tolerance or Prediabetes is a lifestyle disorder. This means that although no single line of treatment will improve the condition, making the right changes in your lifestyle is all you need to do. First, here are some basics of prediabetes that everyone must know:
Are You At Risk?
- Do you have a family history of diabetes or obesity? (think of parents, grandparents, and siblings)
- For women, PCOS can be a risk factor
- Do you lead a sedentary lifestyle?
If even one of these risk factors exists, you could be prediabetic.
How To Identify Prediabetes?
- HbA1c% between 5.7-6.4%
- Fasting Blood Glucose 110-125 mg/dL
- Post Prandial Blood Glucose 140-200 mg/dL
Once you know where you stand, the real work begins. Reversal of prediabetes entails making multiple small changes in your lifestyle. These small changes have a cumulative impact on your health, leading to better glucose tolerance.
Nutritionist and Diabetes Educator Khushboo Jain Tibrewala, Founder of The Health Pantry, shares six changes that can jumpstart your reversal journey:
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1. Change your relationship with food: Most eat to celebrate, mourn, entertain, calm down when angry, and more. This kind of relationship with food is not ideal. This is the primary cause of most lifestyle disorders, including prediabetes. Food should be eaten as a medicine, as fuel and nothing more.
2. Gradually switch to a clean foods diet: Slowly and gradually start switching to eating foods in their “closest to nature” form. Some examples include:
- Replace refined flour or maida with whole flour or millet
- Use cold-pressed and filtered oil instead of refined oils
- Replace processed sweeteners like sugar, jaggery, etc., with dates, stevia leaves, cinnamon, etc.
- Choose rolled oats over instant oats.
3. Eating sequence: Eat your vegetables first, followed by the remaining meal. This slows down the post-prandial glucose spike characteristic of impaired glucose tolerance.
So you would start your meal with a salad or whatever vegetable you have in the meal first. And then eat the dal roti or rice, etc.
4. Include two portions of natural fats in the daily diet: Fats improve fullness, slow down glucose spikes after eating and keep you full for hours. Fats are also used as raw materials to manufacture various hormones. Eating good quality fats will, thus, optimize the hormone production systems.
5. 30 minutes Strength training daily: Strength training improves muscle mass. Higher muscle mass improves insulin sensitivity leading to better glucose tolerance.
6. Identify your root cause: Your cause can sometimes be very unexpected. Stress is one such factor. Stress increases inflammation in the body, which leads to disrupted glucose and fat metabolism. Therefore, identifying your cause can be a highly empowering way of reversing prediabetes.
When executed consistently for 12 weeks, these six changes will significantly improve your levels and protect you from tipping over the edge and developing type 2 diabetes. | Home
