Free Atkins Diabetes Revolution by Robert C. Atkins Page A

within ten years if you are overweight unless you take action now. 3 Prediabetes should be your wake-up call to take charge of your health.
     
    When Justine M. came to see me, she related the following history. In 1996, at age 52, five feet one inch tall, and weighing 237 pounds, her laboratory results were close to normal, with a fasting blood sugar (FBS) of92. By 1997, her weight had climbed to 248 and her FBS had climbed to109. A year later she had put on another 10 pounds and her glycated hemoglobin (A1C) had climbed to a diabetic level of 8.3. She was referred to me three years later, at which time she weighed 306 pounds. Her girth at her navel was 60 inches and her BMI was 58! Justine was taking two medicines for blood sugar and one for blood pressure. Now, two years later, after following Atkins, she weighs 191 pounds, her waist is down to 41 inches, and she is medication-free. Her labs look like this: FBS: 102; c-peptide: 2.2; A1C: 5.7; cholesterol: 159; triglycerides: 42; HDL: 57; and LDL: 93. She looks great, feels great, and, as a bonus, her medication costs have plummeted.     —M ARY V ERNON
    SCREENING: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
    As Dr. Atkins knew from observing patients over the years, the standard blood sugar tests do not detect the presence of insulin and glucose changes early enough. Also, the fasting blood sugar test is not foolproof. By now you realize that this process can be diagnosed and treated at an earlier stage if your doctor knows how to test for it.
    Today the American Diabetes Association guidelines call for routine fasting blood sugar tests on everyone over age 45.If the test is normal,it should be repeated at three-year intervals.If you have other risk factors for diabetes, the guidelines call for testing to start earlier and to be repeated as appropriate. 4 Unfortunately, the screening guidelines often aren’t always followed, which is why about a third of diabetes cases in the United States go undetected. If everyone with just a single risk factor for diabetes were screened, nearly 100 percent of all cases would be found. 5
    Here’s the problem: Some doctors are not following the current testing guidelines, but even if they were, many people would still not be diagnosed early, as early as possible. We have a diagnostic test that Dr. Atkins believed was imprecise and used too late in the game. No wonder so many people are slipping through the cracks!
    THE PREVALENCE OF PREDIABETES
    Just about everyone who develops Type 2 diabetes has prediabetes first. According to the National Institutes of Health, at least 20.1 million people in the United States ages 40 to 74 had prediabetes during the years 1988–1994. 6 That works out to 21.1 percent of the population. But today many people much younger than age 40—even children and teens—have prediabetes. That means the total number of people with this condition is probably considerably larger— perhaps as many as one in three Americans.
    THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF PREDIABETES
    There’s strong evidence that having prediabetes is almost as dangerous to your health as having diabetes itself. By the time your blood sugar falls into the prediabetes range, your risk of heart disease and of dying goes way up. 7 , 8 Recently, researchers found that many people hospitalized for heart attacks have undiagnosed prediabetes or diabetes. A recent study in Sweden, for instance, looked at 181 patients admitted to the hospital for heart attack. During their hospital stays, 31 percent were found to have diabetes and 35 percent to have prediabetes—but not one of them knew it. This was no fluke. Three months after discharge,the blood sugar tests were repeated and the results were consistent.The authors noted that perhaps the true prevalence of diabetes in patients admitted for heart attacks could be as high as 45 percent. 9
    The results of this study reinforce what Dr.Atkins said all along:It is absolutely imperative that early screening and treatment become