Do you know your blood sugar? The new recommendations for diabetes screening – time.news

by time news
from Elena Meli

After age 35, everyone should know their blood sugar, just like weight and height. Because the sooner diabetes or prediabetes is diagnosed, the better (and longer) you can manage your high blood sugar.

Those over 35, if they have not already done so, should measure their blood sugar: this is established by the new recommendations of the US Preventive Task Force American, but a good idea that we should also follow this side of the ocean. After the age of 35 anyone should know their blood sugar, as happens with weight and height: identifying who has blood sugars that tend to rise can help prevent the onset of real diabetes, while diagnosing the disease early means being able to deal with it and manage better.

The new guidelines

The new recommendations lower the age to 35 to start having controls from the previously recommended 40: there are no clinical studies that have clearly shown an advantage of starting controls at a younger age, but there is the certainty that inexpensive screening, not at all invasive and above all that once the people at risk have been identified, in conditions of prediabetes or with a glycaemia between 100 and 124 mg / dl, the progression of the disease can be prevented with intensive lifestyle changes; moreover, in those who receive the diagnosis, early intervention can reduce mortality and the risk of complications, including for example the probability of heart attack in subsequent years. In short, now clear, the first you try to keep your blood sugar under control, the better for your general health: hence the recommendation to start measuring blood sugar early, at 35.

How you do it

The US document is even more cautious than a similar one drawn up in 2021 by theAmerican Diabetes Association, according to which the starting age of screening should be 45 years in those who have no other risk factors and only goes down if they are overweight, sedentary or have a family history of diabetes. Given the simplicity of screening (a drop of blood is enough to measure blood sugar), according to experts, the time has come to convince everyone to undergo it and then eventually intervene, considering it an opportunity not to be missed for individual well-being and public health. If anything, the problems begin when you have to plan the intervention, because it is not at all easy to change your lifestyle in a really incisive way. Richard Grant of the Kaiser Permanente Northern California commenting on the recommendations, which were recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, he writes: It is not easy for patients enrolled in clinical trials to change their habits, they are very followed and motivated, and therefore it is even more difficult for others to do it. However, an effort that is indispensable to make by helping people as much as possible, from young adulthood, to change an incorrect lifestyle to avoid a disease that has very negative consequences on quality and life expectancy, concludes Grant.

October 3, 2021 (change October 3, 2021 | 18:57)

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