LET’S START BY learning and understanding more about prediabetes, how it affects your body, and how it differs from diabetes, as well as how it is diagnosed. Once you know that, you can work with your medical team and others to get started on a set of healthy habits to treat it.
The Pancreas: A Key Player in the Endocrine System
The endocrine system is composed of glands that secrete the hormones. These travel through the circulatory system to regulate metabolism, growth, development, and reproduction. The glands that make up the endocrine system include the adrenals, the thyroid and parathyroid, the hypothalamus, the pituitary, the pineal, the reproductive glands (testes, ovaries), and the pancreas. If any of these glands secrete either too little or too much of a hormone, the entire body can be thrown off-balance. Diabetes mellitus is classified as a disease of the endocrine system, so understanding how the pancreas functions as part of this system can help illustrate the way diabetes and prediabetes develop.
The pancreas is located in the abdomen, next to the upper part of the small intestine. It’s long and tapered with a thicker bottom end (or head), which is cradled in the downward curve of the duodenum—a part of the small intestine. The long end (or tail) of the pancreas extends up behind the stomach toward the spleen. A main duct, or channel, connects the pancreas
Blood Sugar Control: Why Is It So Important?
Keeping your blood sugars under control is key to managing pre-diabetes and preventing adverse outcomes, such as the development of type 2 diabetes and all the potential complications that can go with it. A diagnosis of pre-diabetes does not mean you will automatically develop type 2 diabetes. If you take action early to get the right treatment to return blood sugars to normal range, you can avoid diabetes. However, the longer you let your blood sugars stay elevated, the greater your risk of progressing to type 2 diabetes.
The pancreas of a person who is on the fringe of type 2 diabetes generates insulin, but the body is unable to process it in sufficient amounts to control blood sugar levels. This inability is due to a problem with how the body’s cells—specifically the insulin receptors that attract and process the hormone—recognize and use insulin. As blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas pumps out more and more insulin to try to compensate. This pumped insulin may bring blood sugar levels down to a degree, but it also results in high levels of circulating insulin, a condition known as hyper insulin. At a certain threshold, the weakened pancreas cannot produce enough insulin, and over time beta cell mass is lost. As beta cells die, insulin deficiency develops. At this point, you move into type 2 diabetes. If you don’t carefully control your blood sugars at this point, then both short- and long-term complications can develop.
The human body needs glucose to function, but too much glucose circulating in the bloodstream has the potential to be toxic to all the tissues and organs of the body, including the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. This is known as Glucose toxicity. When insulin isn’t available, blood sugar levels rise higher and higher in the bloodstream. If you’ve got this condition, you may experience fatigue, excessive thirst, and increased urination. In the short term, if blood sugars are not controlled, you can develop the three polydipsia (increased thirst), polyuria (increased urination), and (increased hunger). These are the classic symptoms many people develop before receiving a diabetes diagnosis. Blurred vision and skin changes such as acanthus Nigerians (areas of darkened and thickened skin) can also develop early on.
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