Get Tested for Diabetes!

Being African-American alone is a risk factor for developing diabetes (in addition to whether it runs in your family).  My father had it and my sister has it…You also do not need to be overweight or obese to get diabetes.  It is a worldwide epidemic!

George Edmond Smith, MD in Taking Care of Our Own:  A Black American’s Guide to Family Medicine sums up the importance of knowing whether you have diabetes:  “It [diabetes] affects African Americans at a disproportionately high rate.  African Americans are fifty-five percent more likely than White Americans to have the disease.  Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, amputation, and heart and kidney failure for African Americans.” (p. 71, 2004)  People are being diagnosed at earlier ages, especially children(!), with Type 2 Diabetes; with many going through life UNDIAGNOSED and, by not knowing, not treating their disease!!  This post is about the various blood tests available to diagnose diabetes, so that you don’t go through life not knowing whether or not you have it.

The test that doctors tend to give you to diagnose diabetes means that you have to fast the night before—the typical person is inconvenienced by this, so it’s usually not even administered.  Now that the a1c test (the test that I had done 1.5 years ago that showed me as pre-diabetic) has become standardized, world health experts are hoping that many more—the majority of people—will ask for and get tested for diabetes.  There is a problem with using the a1c on people of African descent, and that is “[they] may have a less common type of hemoglobin, known as a hemoglobin variant, that can interfere with some A1C tests” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012).  Thus, African-Americans might want to fast the night before and get the more commonly used test!  I invite you to read the text from “The a1c test and diabetes” for yourself, if interested in pursuing this topic with your doctor.

In the course of writing this blog, as I am in the process of trying to lose abdominal belly fat—a risk factor for various chronic diseases—I will tell you about weight loss tips, and my experiences with them.  All of this with the goal in mind being the prevention of my (and maybe your) pre-diabetes from developing into full-blown diabetes!

Reference:

Smith, G.E.  (2004).  Taking care of out own:  A Black American’s guide to family medicine.  Roscoe, IL:  Hilton Publishing Company.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.  (2012, June 19). The a1c test and diabetes.  Retrieved July 18, 2012 from http://www.diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/A1CTest/#11