Pre-diabetic but need some help please

[Dizi]

New here so hello everyone.
blood nurse informed me few days ago that I was pre-diabetic. What does this actually mean? Do you have to be overweight, unfit and eat the wrong food to be diabetic? What prompted me to get a blood test was the weird symptoms I had which are happening more often that are not listed in health websites.
One morning I was quite hungry while out shopping. The only available source of food was sweets so bought some and ate the lot. A few hours later I felt all shaky inside. Skin was clammy and I went weaker and weaker. Could hardly walk let alone talk. It felt as if my life force was leaving me. My heart rate seemed to really slow down. Thought I was going to pass out. Had to sit on the ground could not make it to my car. Later suspected the sugar had something to do with this vowed not to eat sugary stuff again.
Other times the same thing happened as above, but I had not eaten any sugary stuff prior to the attack. But still, totally forgetting my vow not to each sugar I devoured three packs of sweets off a friend in an attempt to find someway to stop what was happening to me but to no avail. In fact the attack lasted much longer after eating the sweets.
Weird attacks have happened more often now hence diabetes blood check......! Told I pre-diabetic....
Has anyone had a similar experience as mine?

 

[TheClockworkDodo]

Hello @Dizi and welcome.

When they did your blood test, they presumably did an HbA1c test, which shows the levels of sugar in your blood over the last 3 months. A healthy result is under 42, while if the result is over 48 you have diabetes, so "prediabetes" is between 42-48 - high enough to show you need to make some changes to your diet stop yourself developing diabetes, but not in the diabetic range.

No, you don't have to be overweight, unfit, and eat the wrong food to be diabetic. A lot of us are skinny, some of us are extremely fit, many of us eat very healthily. Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease and has nothing whatever to do with what someone eats or whether they exercise or what they weigh. Being overweight and unfit are risk factors for type 2, but they are not the only risk factors, and there are quite a few slim and fit type 2s here.

The symptoms you describe sound to me like plummeting blood sugar. You can get this if a) you've eaten a lot of sweet stuff and your blood sugar has gone up very high and is now going down, which sounds as though it's what happened to you the first time; b) you have a very rare condition called Reactive Hypoglycaemia, which causes your blood sugar to spike up and then plummet down every time you eat carbs - it's unlikely to be this in your case because you said it was a few hours before you had the symptoms and with RH they'd have happened almost immediately; and c) you're a diabetic on insulin and you've had too much insulin, which is obviously not the case for you.

If I were you I'd stick to that vow not to eat sugary stuff, and also try to cut down on starchy carbs like bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, pizza, and cereals, because those are the things which will send your blood sugar up - as will anything like fruit juice, dried fruit, and exotic fruit. Instead when you're hungry or if you get those symptoms again, eat a chunk of cheese and a couple of low carb biscuits (TUC, for instance). And for meals eat plenty of things like fish, meat, eggs, full-fat dairy (the low fat stuff is packed with sugar), along with plenty of leafy veg and salads.

 

[Felinia]

I suggest you go to the Home page and read the section Preventing Type 2 Diabetes, which will explain what Prediabetes is. I wish I had taken more notice of it when I was first prediabetic.