If your medical records say you have prediabetes, but your doctor has not spoken to you about this, then speak up to your doctor.

I have witnessed the phenomenon of doctors not minding the existence of a prediabetic fasting blood sugar level twice already.

But what is prediabetes?

“The normal fasting blood sugar should be ranging from 70-99 mg/dL, and prediabetes is in a range of 100-125mg/dL,” says Sashini Seeni, MD, a family medicine practitioner with DoctorOnCall, an online doctor and pharmacy.

If someone’s fasting blood sugar is, for example, 107, this might mean prediabetes, says Dr. Seeni.

But one isolated reading does not automatically brand you as prediabetic.

I once had a fasting glucose of 106. The report said “impaired glucose metabolism.”

But my doctor was not concerned. After I researched prediabetes I discovered the very most likely cause of the 106 fasting glucose: eight weeks of disrupted sleep combined with severe anxiety (I was taking care of my parents’ dying dog).

In fact, a study shows that ONE night of disrupted sleep can cause fasting glucose to jump into the prediabetes range.

• But what if the patient reports good sleep and there is more than one such reading in a row?
• And what if there IS a diagnosis in the records as “prediabetic”?

My mother had quintuple bypass surgery. Several months prior, she had her gall bladder removed. Between these two events, a number of blood tests were taken.

Going into the bypass surgery, my mother already had been diagnosed as “prediabetic” by one of the doctors involved in the gall bladder issue.

I found this out when I came upon her medical records when reviewing the pile of paperwork that came after the bypass surgery.

Prediabetes?

This was never pointed out to my mother because when I asked her about it, she didn’t have a clue.

Is it possible that the doctor had discussed the prediabetes with her, and she flat-out forgot all about it?

Yes, that’s possible in my mother’s case. But she was remembering other things that had been discussed, however.

A number in the low prediabetic range “is not a high enough concern for a treatment of diabetes,” says Dr. Seeni.

“Even if you want a medicine for prediabetes, it is not as effective as exercising and diet.

“Your doctor could prescribe medicine if you are at high risk of developing diabetes and have other medical problems.

“But in a state of fasting blood sugar is in the low 100s, you can prevent and treat prediabetes with diet, exercising and losing weight.”

Know What’s in Your Medical Records

My mother never knew she had been diagnosed with prediabetes until she was reading the paperwork describing the bypass surgery!

As for my “impaired glucose metabolism” on the paperwork, I had discovered this five weeks after seeing my primary care physican for sudden-onset diarrhea.

I then recalled that when I was in the doctor’s office, the doctor had said, “Oh, you’ll get your lab results by e-mail.

You’ll note that your blood sugar is a little high; it’s been flagged, but just because something’s a little out of range doesn’t mean it’s anything to worry about.”

I e-mailed my doctor asking why my fasting glucose of 106 was, in a sense, being swept under the rug.

She responded that a diagnosis of prediabetes cannot be made unless a second fasting glucose test, taken six months later, is also high. And that was that.

I also didn’t have any known risk factors for type 2 diabetes such as excess body fat. 

The situation was let go, and not surprisingly, to this day, I have never had another “prediabetic” fasting blood glucose, and all of my A1c tests have been normal.

Summary of How to Prevent Prediabetes

There is a connection between prediabetes, disrupted sleep and emotional stress.

Learn to practice stress and anxiety management (though that’s often very difficult, depending on the circumstances), and do your best to get restorative sleep.

Lose excess weight, do cardio exercise, strength training workouts and limit processed foods with a plant based diet.

DoctorOnCall is the largest digital healthcare platform for citizens of Malaysia, allowing patients to consult doctors for advice, book appointments and place orders with local pharmacies.

Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.

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Top image: Shutterstock/Stokkete

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