Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's midweeks. I've been called Ask a Nutritionist. My name is

Brittany Vincent. I'm a registered and licensed dietitian at Nutritional, Weight, and Wellness.

And on today's show, I will be answering

a few questions related to blood sugar, including, can prediabetes be reversed and will weight

loss improve glucose levels? Well, let's start with the first question. Can prediabetes be reversed? The short answer is yes,

pre-diabetes can absolutely be reversed and I have even seen type 2 diabetes be reversed.

So I want to start by discussing what a pre-diabetes diagnosis is. Pre-diabetes is a condition where your blood sugar levels are higher than normal,

but not high enough to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It's essentially like a warning sign

that your body is struggling to manage blood glucose efficiently. Specifically, if your fasting blood sugar is between 100 to 125 milligrams per deciliter

or your hemoglobin, A1C is between 5.7% and 6.4% is when you will get a prediabetes diagnosis from your doctor.

You know, optimally, your fasting blood sugar or blood glucose should be below 90,

and your A1C should be 5.4 or below.

One study showed that people with a fasting blood glucose above 95 had more than three

times of risk at developing future diabetes than people with the fasting blood glucose below

90.

So below 90 really is optimal. Getting your fasting blood glucose tested is really

just one snapshot in time, though, whereas your hemoglobin A1C measures your glucose over the last

eight to 12 weeks. And when these numbers are elevated, it indicates that your body is becoming resistant to insulin.

You have insulin resistance.

Insulin is the hormone responsible for moving that sugar from your blood inside your cells so that

your cells can create energy.

I also recommend my clients get their fasting insulin tested. This measures the amount of insulin that your pancreas is producing.

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