10 Prediabetes Signs You MUST Know Before It Is Too Late

Hello Health Champions. This video, the top  10 signs and symptoms of pre-diabetes, may  

be the most important video you will ever watch  because pre-diabetes is the single greatest hidden  

health threat in the world today. Pre-diabetes  also known as insulin resistance affect about 88  

million people in the us today and even though the  us is sort of the worst in the world so far, the  

rest of the world is catching up rather quickly.  And the thing we have to understand about insulin  

resistance is that it's not a condition that you  either have it or you don't it's a gradient it's  

a question of where are you on the scale and the  scale we're going to use here is hemoglobin a1c  

so what is that it's a really good measure of  your average glucose because when you have blood  

sugar which everyone does some of that sugar gets  stuck to the red blood cells and the red blood  

cells live for about three to four months and  therefore if we measure how much sugar gets stuck  

it's a really good indicator of your blood sugar  over a three to four month period and normal  

a1c is going to be somewhere around five so on the  official criteria anything less than 5.7 is normal  

then if you're over 5.7 but below 6.5 then you're  considered pre-diabetic and anybody over 6.5 is a  

type 2 diabetic and in the u.s today as i said we  have 88 million people in the pre-diabetic range  

we have 35 million people with full-blown type 2  diabetes but here's why they call it pre-diabetes  

because around 75 of the pre-diabetics will  get type 2 diabetes statistically not everybody  

but most people will get it and they typically  will develop this somewhere around a five-year  

period so that means the diabetic epidemic that  we've seen is just the tip of the iceberg because  

75 percent of these 88 million people that's  66 million more so in just a matter of time  

we'll probably have a hundred million type two  diabetics but if we don't just wait until we  

are pre-diabetic if we understand that there's  a problem a little bit sooner than that and we  

understand that an optimal a1c is up to about  5.3 then we realize that there's probably  

somewhere around 75 million people and this is my  guesstimate there are no real numbers that I've  

been able to find but just based on what I've  seen based on a lot of blood tests we probably  

have about 75 million optimal people have a normal  and a good glucose tolerance and glucose handling  

so that means that there's people a lot of people  between 5.3 and 5.7 and that would make up about  

150 million people who are slipping and they're  part of this massive momentum of eating the  

standard American diet of eating processed  foods lots of sugar lots of white flour and  

that means that they are also moving they're  slipping so unless they change then these people  

are just younger and they haven't abused their  bodies long enough and if only about 75 million  

people are normal or optimal that means almost  300 million people in the U.S. have some degree of  

a glucose handling problem and that means almost  everyone that you know is affected by this that's  

why it's so important to understand these things  the most common way they diagnose pre-diabetes is  

when blood sugar is higher than normal but not  as high as a diabetic and that means that they  

measure and the glucose is between 100 and 125  milligrams per deciliter and if we measure the  

a1c we just talked about it's between 5.7 and 6.5  even though they estimate 88 million people have  

this they fall in this range ninety percent of  them don't know it and why is it that they don't  

know it it's because we focus on blood sugar we  measure blood sugar but blood sugar is something  

the body works very very hard at keeping in a  very narrow range because it's super important  

for energy for focus for the brain to keep it  at a constant level so we have multiple systems  

in the body that's going to raise it when it's  low and lower it when it's high so if we measure  

something that is tightly controlled we're only  going to see changes when the system has gone  

so far it completely failed and that's why when  we measure blood sugar we'll see it be the same  

year after year after year no your normal no  your normal come back next year no you don't have  

it yet come back next year so 10 years 15 years  into it we basically won't see much difference  

but the way the body keeps it down is with  insulin so if we measured insulin we would see  

how hard is the body working at keeping it down  that's a true measure of insulin resistance  

so in the beginning we might see a pretty  balanced relationship between glucose and insulin  

but a few years later we might see two to  three times as much insulin but the same  

glucose the body is working twice as hard keeping  it down so if we only measure glucose we miss it  

nine years later 12 years later 15 years later and  I'm not exaggerating these numbers that a normal  

level of insulin is about three to four maybe five  but by the time we get to diabetic we're at 25  

and glucose changes very very very slowly like  i said only when the system fails are we going  

to see a change whereas if we watch the insulin  instead we will see almost a linear change so we  

would know where we are on that scale and if we  look at the official criteria for insulin we see  

that it's a very wide range it's almost a tenfold  difference normal is considered 2.6 all the way up  

to 25 whereas glucose has a very very tight range  and if we measured it then we would tell much much  

earlier where we are so sign number two of insulin  resistance which really should be number one but  

it's very rare that they measure it is elevated  fasting insulin sign and symptom number three is  

fatigue and this is especially if you have fatigue  after a meal that's a sign of insulin resistance  

so when you eat food then the purpose of that  food is to be turned into energy and this  

shouldn't take a whole lot of effort for the body  it does require resources and after a big meal you  

often feel kind of relaxed a little tired but you  shouldn't have like a fatigue that interferes with  

what you're doing and if you do get severe fatigue  then it means that your carbohydrate machine is  

broken you have a system to process carbohydrates  but if you have overwhelmed it over time now  

it's not really working anymore so now you ate  carbohydrates but the cells are resisting because  

you've given them too much carbohydrate over too  long a time and they're resisting that's insulin  

resistance so now instead of the food providing  energy you have to use energy to dispose of the  

carbs because they can't stay in the bloodstream  that's dangerous for the brain we have to control  

this blood sugar so the body has to use energy to  convert the glucose into triglycerides and this  

is why triglycerides or blood fats will get high  when you eat glucose so a lot of people on a low  

fat diet will have very very high blood fats  because of this process sign number four is poor  

wound healing when you get a cut  and it just kind of sticks around  

for for weeks and also number five numbness  and tingling which is because of peripheral  

neuropathy and i group these together because they  are essentially the same cause poor circulation  

and why do you get poor circulation because the  excess glucose when you have a constant level  

of too much glucose some of that kind of leaks  out into the tissues the surrounding tissues  

and it's going to bind a little extra water so  we get swelling in the tissues and this prevents  

that blood circulation from functioning  optimally and in the early stages you might  

find that things just happen a little bit slower  and you feel a little funny and if this process  

continues uncontrolled then eventually in  type 2 diabetes it could lead to amputation  

type 2 diabetes is the number one cause  of amputations and you're not going to get  

amputations in pre-diabetes but that's why  it's so important to understand the process  

and change it early number six is kidney damage  and there's something called micro vessel disease  

which is related to the circulatory issues we  just talked about and the kidney has an incredibly  

large number of tiny tiny blood vessels and if  we get swelling then we also get some leaking  

and some destruction of those blood vessels and  if we recognize the early signs we can reverse it  

but if it goes unchecked then we will probably  at some point see kidney failures and type 2  

diabetes is the number one cause of kidney failure  leading to dialysis site number seven is blurred  

vision and this happens because of retinopathy  disease of the retina which is the sensitive  

light detecting area in the back of the eye now  i saw a video with millions of views it was one  

of those animated things with a computerized  voice that said that retinopathy is swelling  

of the lens which of course is incorrect because  the lens is up in the front of the eye and the  

retina is in the back so just like in the kidney  it's a case of micro vessel disease you have tiny  

tiny blood vessels and when these blood vessels  swell then we have damage to the retina and if  

this goes far enough it can result in vision loss  you start with blurred vision then eventually you  

could have vision loss and again type 2 diabetes  is the number one cause of blindness so you want  

to stop it long before that another thing we hear  about very often is frequent urination and that is  

not a problem typically with pre-diabetes because  pre-diabetes is when your blood sugar is 100-125  

and there's something called a kidney or renal  threshold if the blood sugar gets above 180  

now there's too much sugar in the blood for the  kidneys to resorb that so you filter it out with  

the water and then the kidneys reabsorb it but  it has to get pretty high the diabetes has to be  

completely out of control before we start spilling  sugar in the urine and losing water and getting  

very thirsty so that's a sign of a full-blown  really poorly controlled type 2 diabetes another  

thing we often see claimed related to pre-diabetes  is digestive issues and while you can have that  

it's not a causal factor it's an association the  insulin resistance is not causing the digestive  

issues it is probably because you have dysbiosis  you are screwing up your bacterial flora by  

feeding them the wrong foods when you have an  unbalanced flora and now you keep feeding them  

carbs now you get bloating and digestive issues  so yes you can have it but it's not the cause of  

the pre-diabetes number eight is joint pain and  arthritis and while this does happen it's not for  

the reasons we think typically what I hear people  say is I've had hundreds of people come into the  

office and they say I know my knees are hurting  my back is hurting because of my weight if I  

just lost some weight I know I wouldn't have that  pain and that is not how it works we've heard it  

so many times that we think that the weight causes  the pain that there's a direct relationship there  

but that's not true instead insulin resistance  causes inflammation and this inflammation causes  

the joint pain and the arthritis because whether  it's osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis  

it's an inflammatory condition the osteoarthritis  is a much milder form of inflammation but it's  

still inflammation and then of course insulin  resistance also causes weight gain so that's  

number nine is weight gain we know this because  that's the purpose of insulin insulin lowers  

blood glucose it guides that glucose into the cell  where a tiny bit can be stored as carbohydrate and  

most of it gets stored as fat that's the purpose  and we can watch this relationship this causal  

relationship by giving people extra insulin and  watch them gain weight and this is what happens  

in the treatment of type 2 diabetes they're not  treating the diabetes they're treating the blood  

glucose making the diabetes worse and making  the weight worse and sign and symptom number 10  

is hunger so even though you're gaining weight  even though you're having more and more energy  

reserves on your body in the form of fat you're  getting hungrier and hungrier because when you're  

insulin resistant your body has a tendency  to store rather than retrieve so even though  

you have all that energy you can't get to it your  body is in storage mode you're gaining weight but  

you're getting hungrier so you're gaining weight  but you're getting hungrier and on and on and this  

is the real problem this is why we can't control  our behavior that's why it's not about calories  

it's about insulin and insulin resistance but  there's two more things that we have to realize  

is that you don't necessarily gain weight when  you become insulin resistance because a lot of  

it has to do with the liver and a lot of people  even thin people they might have a tiny little  

bit of a pot belly usually but you can become  pre-diabetic and type 2 diabetic with a normal  

body weight and the other thing to understand is  that this is the biggest health problem that we  

have but it's not the only problem so if you're  watching this don't automatically think that all  

of what's going on with you is insulin resistance  it is 80 or so of the problem for most people but  

it's not the only problem. If you enjoyed this  video you're going to love that one, and if you  

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