Summary: Susan Burke March demystifies pre-diabetes and talks about what you can do to deal with it.<br> <br> Host: Gloria Tsang, RD<br> Guest: Susan Burke March, MS, RD<br> <br> You or someone you love may have recently been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. With a name like that, you may wonder whether it means you're already somewhat diabetic and need to be on a strict regimen. Nutritionist and certified diabetes educator Susan Burke March, author of Making Weight Control Second Nature demystifies pre-diabetes and talks about what you can do to deal with it.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Transcript:<br> Gloria Tsang, RD: You may have heard of the term, pre-diabetes. With a name like this, you may wonder whether it means you're already somewhat diabetic and need to be on a diabetic diet. Welcome to the Nutrition Tidbits podcast. This is Gloria Tsang, Editor-in-Chief for HealthCastle.com. Joining me today is nutritionist and certified diabetes educator Susan Burke March, author of the new book Making Weight Control Second Nature. She is here today to demystify pre-diabetes and talk about what you can do to deal with it. Thank you for joining me Susan.<br> <br> Susan Burke March, MS, RD: Thank you.<br> <br> Gloria Tsang, RD: Now first things, first. Could you explain in laymen's terms what pre-diabetes is and how it differs from regular diabetes?<br> <br> Susan Burke March, MS, RD: The term pre actually means that if you don't do something to change what's going on right now in your body, you will probably most likely be diagnosed with diabetes. We're talking about Type II diabetes which is a disease that's similar to Type I in that it has some of the same symptoms but it's different because usually it's a disease associated with weight and lifestyle. Eighty to ninety percent of people diagnosed with diabetes have Type II diabetes. About eighty percent or more of the people with Type II diabetes get it when they are overweight.<br> <br> Gloria Tsang, RD: So what's the criteria for diagnosis? How does a doctor know that someone has a pre-diabetes condition?<br> <br> Susan Burke March, MS, RD: Pre-diabetes can be determined by blood tests; either a fasting glucose or a glucose tolerance test where you drink a sugar solution and then they test your blood. So that the diagnosis of pre-diabetes is when your blood sugar isn't at quite the level which would be diagnosed as diabetes but it is in a level that's not normal. It's also called impaired glucose tolerance or insulin resistance. What happens is that it's a notice, you are on notice that you need to make some changes because your body is not able to deal with carbohydrates. It is causing high blood sugar and this is very dangerous. This can cause all kinds of complications.<br> <br> Gloria Tsang, RD: So if someone has been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, what's the first step they should do in terms of the food side and the diet?<br> <br> Susan Burke March, MS, RD: That's the really great question because I did a lot of work with diabetes diets and creating diabetes diets when I worked with one company and I really understand that diabetes is not necessarily a prescription for a diet, but it is for a lifestyle. A balanced diet means that there is no one food that you can't eat or foods that you must eat but what you really need to do is look at your total diet and preferably with a registered dietitian and a diabetes educator and really create your diet because what we do know for a diet is that if you are trying to go on a weight loss diet, they all work. They have done a lot of research about diets but the one that works best, the one that works to make you the healthiest is the diet that you can incorporate into your lifestyle permanently. That's the kind of a radical notion because most people think of the word diet something like deprivation. But instead of deprivation, you need to make your diet something that you e...
