National Prediabetes Awareness Campaign

RUNNING and PREDIABETES: A national prediabetes AWARENESS CAMPAIGN was launched this past week by the American Medical Association and several other groups. Dr. AW Gurman, President-Elect of the AMA explained the reason for the campaign: “There are 86 million people in this country who have prediabetes, and 90% don’t know it,” adding, “we need to do something to make people aware of this condition and its risk.”

WebMD.com has a easy-to-understand piece (see URL below) on this condition in which there is an embedded slideshow about insulin resistance (IR). IR is the underlying physiological body condition that is responsible for the elevated blood glucose levels of prediabetes. When body tissues are resistant to the hormone insulin, the specialized cells of the pancreas that produce it work harder to make even more hormone. Overtime, these cells can begin to function poorly and make less insulin, a set-up for diabetes.

WHY discuss running with prediabetes? Moderate physical exercise increases muscle tissue sensitivity to insulin (the opposite of insulin resistance) allowing glucose to be taken up by your skeletal muscle and removed from the blood! Regardless of your commitment to changing your diet, COMMITTING TO RUNNING REGULARLY (following a training plan for example) can reduce your risk of developing prediabetes or help treat it.
(http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/type-2-diabetes-guide/what-is-prediabetes)

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0121-prediabetes.html

RUN HAPPY!