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Glucose (Blood Sugar)

A high glucose level can indicate early diabetes, and often results from being overweight. Glucose testing is an essential first step in getting effective treatment, often through exercise and weight loss.

Some experts are convinced detecting diabetes by finding a high glucose level in a person with no symptoms of diabetes and then doing more detailed follow-up studies can result not only in early diagnosis, but also in initiation of vigorous treatment; they say that by controlling the blood sugar before there are any symptoms of diabetes, the consequences of diabetes - damage to the kidney, heart, blood vessels, and eyes - can be markedly lessened. Healthful Life is not convinced there is persuasive evidence that documents the notion that the outcome of diabetes is different if the diagnosis is made on routine glucose testing compared to waiting until symptoms occur and then treating vigorously.

But, we still measure the blood glucose level for two reasons:

1. There is increasing evidence that a significant percentage of adult onset (Type II) diabetes can be prevented by exercise or weight loss. If a person has a persistently high blood sugar, but no symptoms of diabetes, an exercise program and some weight loss might lower the glucose level to normal and actually prevent diabetes from occurring. That is important because the number of American adults who develop Type II diabetes has increased dramatically over the last decade.

2. Those who appear healthy, but have high blood sugar levels, often also have borderline high or high cholesterol levels, borderline high or moderately elevated blood pressure, or low blood concentrations of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, so-called good cholesterol). The best initial treatment for such cholesterol, blood pressure, and HDL abnormalities is moderate weight loss, often with the help of exercise. We find that, if the glucose level is also elevated, it helps motivate people to lose the weight that often normalizes blood glucose, cholesterol, and HDL levels, and blood pressure.