Are You One of the 6 Million-Plus Americans With Diabetes? Get Tested Now, New York Times Urges

Did you know that a whopping 6 million-plus Americans are in the dark that they have diabetes? This means 6 million Americans are unnecessarily putting themselves as risk for heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, amputations and death.

Hurrah to reporter Denise Grady of the New York Times, for bringing much-needed attention to the abo e stats and the dangers of diabetes — the nation’s sixth biggest killer — with her alarming, but much-needed article, entitled "Finding Whether Diabetes Lurks."

"The idea of so many people… going without treatment is disturbing because diabetes can do so much damage," Grady aptly points out.

Unfortunately, though, she adds, people often don’t realize they’re ill, because "the symptoms — if there are any — may creep up gradually or be attributed to overwork or aging."

I certainly hope this important New York Times story continues to capture lots of attention, because reporter Denise Grady arms you with lots of useful information, even quoting a top expert, Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, chief of endocrinology, diabetes, and nutrition at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.

So, please get tested — as Dr. Pi-Sunyer tells Grady — if you have any of the following symptoms:

• You wake up a couple of times of night to urinate, when you didn’t before.
• You drop a significant amount of weight without trying. (While the weight loss may be welcome, in this case, it doesn’t necessarily mean good news.)
• You have blurred vision.
• You get frequent skin or vaginal infections.
• You get headaches.
• You feel fatigued.

But, as Dr. Pi-Sunyer suggests, even if you seem healthy, you should get tested every three years for diabetes if you have the following risk factors, too:

• You’re obese. (With a waist over 40 inches for males and over 35 inches for females.)
• You have a family history of diabetes.
• You’re sedentary.

Grady observes that the simplest ways to detect diabetes are to get either:

• A fasting blood sugar test (which many doctors like) or
• A two-hour glucose tolerance test.

FYI, I discuss both of those tests, as well as the eight-hour glucose tolerance test — which can be used to check for hypoglycemia — in my book SUGAR SHOCK!

Meanwhile, as the New York Times reporter points out, both of those tests also can pinpoint pre-diabetes or impaired glucose metabolism, which is when your blood sugar is higher than normal, but not high enough to be considered diabetes. About 54 million Americans have pre-diabetes, Grady observes, and up to 8% of them will ultimately develop diabetes each year.

Just think of the lives that could be improved — or even saved — if more people learned that their blood sugar levels were elevated before they reached the diabetic range.

So please, if you have any of the above symptoms, go see a doctor and get tested!

In the meantime, please try to get more educated about diabetes and sugar’s dangers and the value of exercising and losing weight. My book SUGAR SHOCK! is a good start, I believe.

Read Denise Grady’s helpful New York Times story now.

Thanks to SUGAR SHOCK! Blog researcher Jennifer Moore for her help on this post.