Pre-Diabetes: Health Story

Aired on Lifetime Television
Sunday, November 11 and December 30, 2007

Show 426

"I was grossly overweight. I was tired all the time," says Carole Williams. Worried about the possibility of developing diabetes, Carole turned to exercise and the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. There she met Maureen Marinelli, who was also nervous about her own blood glucose levels. "Two of my uncles had diabetes and I saw how it changed their lives in a negative fashion. I didn't want that for myself," says Maureen. Both Maureen and Carole showed signs of pre-diabetes, a condition affecting some 40 million people. "Most people with pre-diabetes will develop diabetes within a few years," says Dr. Osama Hamdy. Through the program, both women learned that a few simple lifestyle changes could help reverse the early warning signs of diabetes. "If someone loses around seven percent of their initial body weight, their chance of developing diabetes decreases by almost 58 percent," says Dr. Hamdy.