Anyone have symptoms with pre-diabetes?

[Roy Batty]

I have zero symptoms, none whatsoever. My HbA1c has been in the pre-diabetic range for 7 years. I sleep great, I have little or no stress in my life, I eat very few UPFs, almost no cakes, pastries, biscuits, chocolate, crisps, pizza or any type of junk food. I exercise a lot (walking, swimming, rowing, resistance and Pilates) and have body fat of around 15%, visceral fat <90 cm2, high ALMI (Appendicular Lean Mass Index - muscular limbs) muscle are great glucose sinks. I've used a finger prick test for many months and my spikes are within the normal range and return to base levels quickly. My GP has told me that there is evidence that some for some people insulin sensitivity is a function of age, there's also genetics.

 

[Truffle 01]

I have zero symptoms, none whatsoever. My HbA1c has been in the pre-diabetic range for 7 years. I sleep great, I have little or no stress in my life, I eat very few UPFs, almost no cakes, pastries, biscuits, chocolate, crisps, pizza or any type of junk food. I exercise a lot (walking, swimming, rowing, resistance and Pilates) and have body fat of around 15%, visceral fat <90 cm2, high ALMI (Appendicular Lean Mass Index - muscular limbs) muscle are great glucose sinks. I've used a finger prick test for many months and my spikes are within the normal range and return to base levels quickly. My GP has told me that there is evidence that some for some people insulin sensitivity is a function of age, there's also genetics.

Very interesting to read this. I have a friend who has been very overweight for decades, although very fit also, who finds losing weight nearly impossible but isn't even prediabetic.

 

[KennyA]

"Slip ups" happen. No, no symptoms when you're prediabetic. It's more like an amber warning light. Letting you know that you should make some changes.

Great that you're active. Hopefully your adding muscle. This is something that let's us down as we age. Less muscle = high risk of metabolis issues.

Those times you eat pizza and so on, if you can have a portion of veg before, this increases fibre intake and helps over eating and helps with fullness.

It's all trial and error, keep going.

I disagree with your statement "no symptoms when you're pre-diabetic" and my lived experience and that of many other people on this forum bears it out. Also, in my experience, adding other foods to carby food has precisely no effect. The key is not to eat the carby food.

What are you basing your views on, as you say you're not diabetic?

 

[IanBish]

Very interesting to read this. I have a friend who has been very overweight for decades, although very fit also, who finds losing weight nearly impossible but isn't even prediabetic.

Not all overweight or obese people develop diabetes. Generally, for a person to develop Type 2, it depends if they're genetically disposed to visceral fat affecting their pancreas' ability to produce sufficient insulin, and for their liver to stop producing glucose when it's not needed.

 

[KennyA]

Very interesting to read this. I have a friend who has been very overweight for decades, although very fit also, who finds losing weight nearly impossible but isn't even prediabetic.

There seems to be a range of experiences. In my case, I gained weight only after my BG left normal range: being overweight did not make me diabetic, but being diabetic seems to have made me overweight. And (once switched to low carb) my BG was normal long before I'd lost any significant weight. That doesn't fit with the "obesity causes T2" hypothesis.

As testing for insulin levels is not routinely done in T2, it's impossible to say what happens to most people's insulin levels. Most (all?) of the low-carb docs seem to think that the issue for many T2s is insulin resistance rather than insulin not being produced - see "Diabetes Unpacked" published by the Noakes Foundation for a quick spin through various low-carb authors.

If insulin isn't being produced, that's tending towards conditions usually associated with T1. This may well be a hangover from the view still current 20 years ago that T2 and T1 were the same disease at different stages. I have text books (eg Scobie's An Atlas of Diabetes Mellitus) published in the late 1990s that refer to "a disease" - which is classed as either Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus or Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus.