Going from a condition of prediabetes to normal blood sugar levels protects heart health for decades: a new pillar in prevention.
Coming back from prediabetes by returning to normal blood sugar values provides tangible and long-lasting benefits to cardiovascular health. The magazine The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology publishes a study that could revolutionize prevention and that will please those who, even on holidays, have had to avoid excesses at the table: people with prediabetes who return to healthy blood sugar levels halve their risk of heart attacks, heart failure and early death.
What is prediabetes and how to deal with it
Prediabetes is a condition characterized by blood glucose levels that are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to justify a diagnosis of full-blown type 2 diabetes. In addition to often anticipating the onset of actual diabetes, prediabetes leads to an increase in other chronic pathologies, starting with cardiovascular diseases, given that high blood sugar can cause silent damage to the cardiovascular system.
The good news is that prediabetes is a potentially reversible condition. The risk of it evolving into diabetes can be limited by changing your lifestyle: in short, by eating healthily and doing more physical activity. Until now, it was thought that these good rules were beneficial to health due to some of their intrinsic properties – in fact, we all know that eating healthily and not being sedentary keeps us healthy. The new study, however, says something else: what benefits the heart is not so much the change in habits, but precisely the fact of being able to bring blood sugar levels back to normal levels.
Remission from prediabetes protects the heart for a long time
A group of scientists from the University of Tübingen, the Helmholtz Munich research center and the German Center for Diabetes Research collaborated with Chinese scientists to analyze two of the world’s largest databases for cardiovascular prevention studies, a 20-year US study and a 30-year Chinese one.
Researchers followed over 2,400 patients with prediabetes and observed that those who managed to normalize their blood sugar levels had a practically halved risk of hospitalization for heart failure, heart attack or death from cardiovascular diseases compared to those who had not achieved remission. The generic risk of early mortality from any cause has also decreased significantly.
A new tool for prevention
A fasting blood sugar level of less than 97 milligrams per deciliter is, according to researchers, a simple indicator of a lower risk of heart disease, regardless of age, weight or ethnic origin. While current guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular risk require patients to stop smoking, lower “bad” cholesterol and keep blood pressure under control, the discovery adds another “pillar”: the need to pursue sustained normalization of blood sugar in case of prediabetes.
If you succeed, you get a reduction in cardiovascular risk that lasts decades. Reasoning in terms of public health, this measure would allow immense gains for patients, and also contain healthcare costs.
