Know Your Real Risk of Diabetes
Is your conventional medical doctor missing your pre-diabetes diagnosis? According to the World Health Organization, in 2019, diabetes and kidney disease caused an estimated 2 million reported deaths. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease, resulting from the body’s ineffective use of insulin. This type of diabetes is caused by genetics, diet, and lifestyle and can be reversed with lifestyle interventions. You’re born with your genes, but that certainly doesn’t mean that you will develop type 2 diabetes. Your lifestyle has more bearing on your risk than anything else. Getting an annual deep dive into your blood work is one sure way to see exactly where you are when it comes to an accurate pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Your risk of developing this type of diabetes can be flagged 10 years before receiving an actual type 2 diabetes diagnosis. The conventional medical model is not designed to accurately discover the early red flags.
One flaw in the conventional medical model is that many doctors don’t gather enough data from your blood work in order to catch any red flags to see if you’re moving in the direction of pre-diabetes. Insulin resistance marks the first step in producing abnormalities in cellular blood glucose signaling. Insulin resistance is when the cells in your liver, muscle, and adipose fat stop listening to the knock on the door by insulin to push the glucose inside. Your cells have insulin receptors, the lock, and the insulin is the key to unlocking the door. Eventually, due to poor diet and lifestyle, that knock weakens until it can no longer be heard by the cells.
If your conventional medical doctor is only looking at your fasting glucose lab results, well, that’s just not enough. Although a fasting glucose test result is accurate, it’s only looking at that moment in time, and that moment can be influenced by hormonal fluctuations, time of day, and activity level. Below are tests that I recommend to my clients, and often get pushback from their doctors.
4 Lab Tests to Diagnose Diabetes Risk
Hgb-A1C
This test gives an estimate of glucose levels over the course of 3 months. This test is helpful in finding early changes in glucose metabolism because it includes post-prandial glucose spikes (after meals). In the conventional medical model, a range between 5.7% and 6.4% are considered pre-diabetic. In the functional medical model, an optimal, healthy range is between 4.5% and 5.1%. You can see the large discrepancy between the two. In conventional medicine, over 6.5% are considered diabetic, and in functional medicine, around 6% are.
Fasting Insulin
This test measures insulin levels after an overnight fast and is an effective tool for measuring insulin resistance. Insulin levels begin to rise when glucose metabolism decreases. Your body needs to produce more and more insulin to handle the glucose that is not getting into the cells. In conventional medicine, a lab result of 7 or above is correlated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. In functional medicine, a more conservative level of 6 and over is used.
Homa-IR
This test uses a score to determine your risk for insulin resistance and stands for Homeostasis Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance. This score is calculated using your fasting insulin and fasting glucose numbers. A score of 1 or lower is optimal, while a score of 2.9 correlates with insulin resistance. This test is one of the best ways to access insulin resistance.
Oral Glucose Tolerance
This is a 2-hour test that measures early glucose abnormalities. This test requires a fasting glucose test, followed by consuming 75mg of a glucose drink, with a number of blood draws for glucose levels at 30, 60, and 120 minutes. If you are over 140 after two hours of drinking the solution, you have a glucose metabolism issue and are at an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality.
Risk Factors for Developing Type 2 Diabetes?
Prediabetes
Multiple genetic mutations correlated with diabetes
Family history
High blood pressure
Poor diet
Sedentary lifestyle
Hypothyroidism
PCOS diagnosis
Menopause
Type 2 diabetes is avoidable and reversible. Living a healthy lifestyle is the first and most important line of defense in preventing this awful disease. Checking in with your sleep, diet, stress, and daily movement is the place to start. Not everyone knows where to start, or how to start implementing change. Hiring a health coach, and fitness coach, and making sure you are partnering with a medical doctor that understands the complexity of this disease and the tests available to you, are all critical components to creating a healthy life.
This blog is not to be used as medical advice or for making any lifestyle changes to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.