[Ronin]

Hi Pile1957!

Welcome to the club nobody ever wanted to join, and welcome to DF!

Your experience is not at all unusual. It is not uncommon for people 50+ to get the infamous Pre-Diabetes diagnosis. You will find that it is a diagnosis that is highly (and sometimes hotly) disputed.

A bit of background: This diagnosis is fairly new and was intended to catch young people who were headed towards youthful onset of Type-2 diabetes. The unintended consequence is that a lot of the over-50 crowd has been swept up in the meantime. You are one of them.

Your MD's advice is good, with a caveat. Super strict commercial diet plans like Southbeach and Atkins do actually work, but only for a very short time. Few people can sustain a life-long commitment to these plans. However, they can be used for rapid weight loss.

Can you control your Blood Glucose (BG) levels with diet modifiation and exercise? Yes you can and there are loads of us here on DF that do it (although, being human, we sometimes fall off our plans from time-to-time).

Now I will make my standard recommendations:

1. Read Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes by Jackson and Tendrich

2. Ask your MD to do a Fasting C-Peptide test at your next blood test. This is imporant because a lot of us over 50 people are really sufferning from low insulin levels and the MD's, thinking we are Type-2 (Insulin Resistant [IR] and produce scads of insulin but it doesn't work), put us through a regimine of all kinds of drugs with various side effects all to increase our sensitiviy to insulin when we don't have sufficient insulin to start with. If the MD want an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) make sure they include C-Peptide readings as that will tell how well your pancreas is producing insulin. This will help you avoid a lot of trial-and-error drug therapies.

3. Regarding the HbA1c test: The medical reasoning (perhaps insurance company reasoning as well) is that this is a 90 day average. What is not said is that this is a 90 day weighted average, skewed heavily towards the most recent four to six weeks. I use a home test kit (Biosafe -- available through Amazon) and do this test monthly (see my signature block) as it is the best indiactor of how you are progressing.

4. Relax: This diagnosis is not a death sentance. It is, at best, a wake-up-call telling you to change your lifestyle -- eat better, exercise more, and take care of yourself.

5. Participate in the various sub-forums and get hints and tips from the members. Our experience may help you prevent problems further down the line.

6. If your MD hasn't suggested it, get a BG meter and start testing yourself. The only way to know what does, does not work for you is to test-test-test-test. You, not your MD, are in charge here.