November 14, 2019, is World Diabetes Day (WDD). It is the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, who co-discovered insulin along with Charles Best in 1922. WDD was created in response to growing concerns about the escalating health threat posed by diabetes.
Having prediabetes means your blood glucose (sugar) levels are higher than normal—but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. Prediabetes can lead to heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes.
Prediabetes can often be reversed.
With type 1 diabetes, your body cannot make insulin, so you need to take insulin every day. Type 1 diabetes is less common than type 2 diabetes; about 5% of the people who have diabetes have type 1. Currently, no one knows how to prevent type 1 diabetes.
With type 2 diabetes, your body cannot properly use insulin (a hormone that helps glucose get into the cells of the body). You can get type 2 diabetes at any age, but you are at higher risk if you are older, overweight, have a family history of diabetes, are not physically active, or are a woman who had gestational diabetes.
Over eighty-four million Americans now have prediabetes.
That is 1 out of 3 adults! Of those 84 million, 9 out of 10 of them don’t even know they have it. Without taking action, many people with prediabetes could develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years.
With numbers like that, it is important to learn about prediabetes and take action.
Take the CDCs online test to find out if you are at risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
The National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) is a partnership of public and private organizations working to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes.
Partners make it easier for people at risk for type 2 diabetes to participate in evidence-based lifestyle change programs to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes.
The National DPP was created in 2010 to address the increasing burden of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in the United States.
This national effort created partnerships between public and private organizations to offer evidence-based, cost-effective interventions that help prevent type 2 diabetes in communities across the United States.
One key feature of the National DPP is the CDC-recognized lifestyle change program, a research-based program focusing on healthy eating and physical activity which showed that people with prediabetes who take part in a structured lifestyle change program can cut their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58% (71% for people over 60 years old).
If you are interested in participating in a CDC-recognized lifestyle change program, learn more about the benefits of joining.
You will get a full year of support and learn how to eat healthily, add physical activity to your routine, manage stress, stay motivated, and solve problems that can get in the way of your goals.
This program is proven to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes.
Participants who lost 5-7% of their body weight and added 150 minutes of exercise per week cut their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by up to 58% (71% for people over 60 years old).
Diabetes is currently the seventh leading cause of death in the United States—and studies show that deaths related to diabetes may be under-reported! Today, 1 in 10 U.S. adults has diabetes, and if trends continue, 1 in 5 will have it by 2025.
For more information read the National Diabetes Statistics Report [PDF-1.35MB] to learn more about the toll that diabetes is taking in the United States.
