On World Diabetes day on November 14, experts assert that people in the pre-diabetic stage, those within the age group of 30 to 40 years, must be targeted as it will go a long way in curbing the advent of the disease.
The pre-diabetic phase is very important as for some, it can be as less as three months, while for others it can be as long as a year or more.
A health check-up, claim medical experts, would give indications like blood sugar levels, triglycerides (fat in the blood that is not used by the body) and high-density lipoprotein whose levels would give an idea of the individual’s diabetic stage.
Rough estimates with endocrinologists, state that there are 70 million Indians in the pre-diabetic stage and educating them would go a long way in controlling the advent of the disease.
The National Urban Diabetes Study shows the highest prevalence in Hyderabad, at 16.61 per cent, making it the diabetes capital of India.
Dr Rabinder Mehrotra, consultant endocrinologist, Apollo Hospitals said, “Indians are descr-ibed as the ‘Asian-Indian phenotype’ where they tend to have greater waist circumference and waist to hip ratios, resulting in central obesity. This allows the circulation of fatty acids in the body that decreases the capacity of the pancreas to produce insulin and control blood sugar.”
Doctors, meanwhile, cl-aim that they are seeing more and more young people with high blood sugar levels. Dr Shiva Raju, senior consultant physician and diabetologist at Kims hospital said, “Some young pati-ents, who walk in, are lean. They exercise and eat healthy food yet they have high blood sugar which means that their metabolism is triggering the disease.”
