I have been having some recent health issues. I have gained weight, tired, memory issues, tremors. I have reactive hypoglycemia and already know that I cannot skip a meal. In order to try to lose some weight I was trying wieght watchers but in order to reduce to the amount of carbs or points they require I get a migraine every time! I told my doctor this. I have a problem with hip pain, I am seeing an orthopedist and he still hasnt found the issue so I had to stop running which always controlled my weight no matter what extra snacks I ate. Of course I am depressed over being in pain, and not running and watching my husband go out for a run…etc. so I eat more and gain more. a year later, Iater I have gained almost 15 pounds which for my small frame is quite a bit. and my A1C is 5.9. My doctor didnt really say anything. Just said, well your eating caused your depressed, right? well that will happen and its around the middle.
I am very concerned. Knowing what can happen next. So I have looked here and saw one of the diets but it mentioned medication. I guess I should be doing daily blood sugars? I only do them right now if I dont feel right and suspect I am high or low. Not sure my dr will even think its neccessary. But one of my friends said that she had a reading like that and in a year she was fully diabetic and on insulin. I would like to do everything I can to avoid that.
There are several things to discuss here. First, a 5.9 A1c is far outside the “normal” range, whatever your doctor says. A normal nondiabetic, nonpregnant, nonobese individual will typically have an A1c of 5.0 or, usually, less. An A1c of 5.9 equates to an average blood glucose reading somewhere between 120 and 130, and that is just simply too high, though not severely so. Not yet, anyway.
Full disclosure: personal bias follows. I object strenously to the term “pre-diabetic”. IMO there ain’t no such thing. Either the body can maintain normal blood sugar without outside help, or it can’t. “Pre-diabetic” is like “a little bit pregnant”. No such animal. The term pre-diabetic is a useful cop-out for both doctors and insurance companies; it implies that well, this isn’t really very serious and we don’t need to devote very much of our precious attention to it. But then, they aren’t the ones with skin in the game, who must live with the results–are they?
As for insulin, there is a lot of nonsense about it in the popular mind, nearly all of it sourced and fostered by the medical profession. Many–perhaps most–doctors still treat insulin as a “last resort” to be used after everything else has been tried and failed. So of course that’s how almost everyone is conditioned to think of it.
Consider the utter absurdity of that. Imagine you had a broken leg, and the doctor said, “Let’s just put you on painkillers so it won’t bother you.” You would probably move at lightspeed to find another doctor who would set the leg in a cast so it could heal, yes?
Insulin is the most powerful weapon against diabetes that exists, by orders of magnitude. Why wait until someone is in such bad shape that nothing else has any possible chance of helping?
If you don’t believe that’s exactly what happens, consider all the standard stories everyone has heard, e.g., “My aunt was put on insulin and she didn’t last a year.” Well, duh. By the time she was put on insulin, she was so far gone that it really was the last thing left to do. Here’s an idea: how about acting proactively so that the “last resort” is never reached?
The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, which is pretty much the gold standard of diabetes care, now puts all newly diagnosed diabetics on insulin right away, even if only temporarily so that control can be reestablished. Presumably they know something.
There are TuDiabetes members (I am one) who finally lost patience with poor control and insisted on insulin for ourselves. It’s the smartest choice I ever made.
Finally: as for testing, yes, you should at a minimum be doing it before and 2 hours after each meal. How else can you possibly know how your blood sugar reacts to food? The A1c is a useful guide but it is an average, and an average, by definition, conceals the peaks and valleys (in diabetic terms, lows and spikes). And those are critically important to be aware of if there is to be any chance of fixing what’s wrong and establishing good control. You can’t attack a problem meaningfully until you know exactly what the problem is.
NIH website states that normal A1C level is below 5.7; prediabetes is 5.7 to 6.4, and diabetes is 6.5 or above. http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/diagnostic-tests/a1c-test-diabetes/Pages/index.aspx
I don’t know where you came up with below 5. Last I heard from the Diabetes Education is that 5 is low. MIne was 6.1 a few months ago (I am a T2).
Furthermore, prediabetes does exist and it means high risk for getting T2. The treatment & diet are about the same as with a full blown T2. Looks like I am still in prediabetes. I am watching my carbs and am staying physically active. Am checking BG only once a day, in the morning fasting.
I’ve noticed that if I skip the bedtime snack that is usually 2 squares of graham crackers and 1 cup of milk, then in the morning I am low or close to it. Last time it happened, my morning fasting number was 72 that is still normal, but close to being low (below 70). So I’m making sure to have my bedtime snack.
Prediabetes is a very big deal. It is your moment of opportunity to make a difference in your life. Taking the necessary steps to lose weight, use muscle, have a meaningful medication discussion with your physician can all prevent more rapid progression to your body’s inability to make enough insulin. You have entered the “danger zone”. Don’t let anyone dismiss it as no big deal. It Is. Be positive and proactive.
. . . and those numbers are on a par with the ADA’s long-lived policy of recommending a high carbohydrate diet to diabetics, and the medical establishment’s heels-dug-in refusal to acknowledge on-the-ground facts. They simply bear no relation to reality.
Empirically measured fasting blood glucose for normal, non-diabetic, non-pregnant, non-obese people typically falls between about 75 to 90. That equates to an A1c of, at worst, about 4.8 or 4.9 depending on which conversion formula you favor. That’s a far cry—a very far cry—from 5.7.
And not all doctors buy the NIH numbers anyway. Mine was emphatic that my 6.2 A1c was conclusively diabetic.
At the risk of being redundant, either your body doesn’t need help to maintain normal blood glucose, or it does. There’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant and there’s no such thing as “almost” diabetic. “Pre diabetic” is a convenient label, but the label is not the thing.
“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”
“Five.”
“No. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
(Abraham Lincoln)
I believe there is such thing as a little bit pregnant. Ditto for prediabetes 
This is just me. I usually don’t see things as black and white only, or either yes or no. I believe there’s always something in between.
Some sites state that prediabetes is an indication that one can develop T2 if they don’t make lifestyle changes. It furthermore states that T2 can be prevented while in the prediabetes stage. Prediabetes: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment
Each to their own. IMHO
As far as the Lincoln quote, I wonder who he was talking to… sounds contradictory at least. Per Snopes site, it’s “probably false” http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=32;t=000450;p=0
Can you please define “a little bit pregnant”? Either one IS pregnant or one IS NOT pregnant. Same with diabetes. It would be infinitely more accurate if everyone used terminology like “Your A1c is quickly approaching a number that indicates that you have diabetes.”
Many adults with higher than normal blood sugar actually have LADA, latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, but are initially misdiagnosed with prediabetes or Type 2. If you have always been active and normal weight, insist on a GAD antibody test. The original post could have come from me, 12 years ago. I have LADA.
Misdiagnosis is pernicious and, unfortunately, all too prevalent. Check these links:
A little bit pregnant means a little bit into pregnancy. Hope this clears the confusion 
Hello Everyone!
As a person who teaches patient/provider communication to budding physicians, I believe (this is just opinion), that one of the challenges is what language to clinicians use with laypersons. The term that clinicians have chosen to use is “prediabete.” The clinical term is impaired glucose tolerance.
Can one’s glucose be impaired a “little bit” according to the clinical guidelines–Yes. Can anyone be in the early stages of pregnancy-yes. Are they able to give birth to a “healthy” child at that “little bit” pregnant stage" – no.
Can anything be done to “reverse the progression” (based upon evidence) of both glucose that is impaired and a woman in early pregnancy? Yes.
For me and me only. That is how I operationalize a little bit.
Communication involves encoding and decoding what people say. If we took things literally, we would expect cats and dogs to fall from the sky as opposed to rain drops.
I thought it might be helpful to share how Tabers Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines prediabetes. [" + Gr. diabetes, passing through]. Early evidence either of autoimmune disease or impaired carbohydrate metabolism in patients who later develop over diabetes mellitus. The condition includes impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance.
In a nutshell, (not literally, I simply mean to summarize 8)) “prediabetes” is a stage of transition of normal glucose metabolism (normal according to the evidence) and one that is impaired.
I hope this is insightful.
@annasdiabetes You’re either pregnant or you’re not!! Same applies to other conditions…you may not be far along in the game, but you most indeed ARE pregnant!
If you have just started running a marathon and are in the first hundred yards, you are not running “a little bit”. You’re either in the race or you aren’t.
Not everyone with “prediabetes” goes on to have full blown diabetes requiring major medical intervention though— many of them are able to halt its progression by altering their behaviors---- everyone seems to be acknowledging this with one side of their mouth while rejecting it with the other.
Yes some cases of diabetes are initially recognized as prediabetes.
Yes some people are told they have prediabetes and then start eating healthier and exercising and never progress to diabetes.
It’s not an either/or proposition. Both can be true.
Sorry, Sam, I just don’t buy it. What you say is true, but . . . saying that you can successfully overcome or reverse a condition is not the same as saying it never existed. If you don’t have it, what is there to reverse?
Let’s apply that logic to another condition— how about high cholesterol?
I was told 6 months ago told by my doctor that my cholesterol was too high and if I couldn’t improve it naturally by diet and exercise I would need to start taking statins.
I started doing more exercise and changed the way I ate. I just got my recent lipid panel back yesterday. My levels are now optimal. I reversed that condition, didn’t I? Does that mean I never had it? No— it means that I was successful in changing it. Is everyone able to change any given health circumstance? No, of course not. Are 100% of health issues completely out of our control… Also no, of course not.
@Sam19 It also means, Sam…that it is STILL a condition existing in your body, which is now dormant due to being under tight and vigilant control.
As measured by the lab, high cholesterol is no longer a condition that is present in my body… So while we’ve acknowledged that the potential for elevated cholesterol exists if I don’t do my part, I don’t have the condition of hypercholestolemia any longer.
Sometimes, not always, this same pattern of intervention can be observed when a person has high blood glucose aka “prediabetes”
@Linda_G see “blighted ovum.”
From the perspective of a clinical exercise physiologist, along the race things occur that “reverse the progress” of the marathon.
They may be in the race, but they may experiencing “bonking” or “hitting the wall.” Hence, the race was run “a little bit.”
Best,
Jo