According to a study, prediabetic patients who reduce their blood sugar levels and control the disease can reduce the chances of serious heart diseases by about 60 percent. According to research published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, bringing blood glucose to normal levels, i.e. effectively treating prediabetes, reduces the risk of death from heart disease or hospitalization for heart failure.
People who got rid of prediabetes had a 58 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalization due to heart failure. Researchers at King’s College London, UK, said this effect persisted decades after glucose levels were normalized, indicating a lasting effect on regulating blood glucose.
This finding is especially important because recent research has shown that lifestyle changes alone, including exercise, weight loss, and improving eating habits, do not reduce cardiovascular risk in people with prediabetes.
Lead author Dr Andreas Birkenfeld, Reader in Diabetes at King’s College London and University Hospital Tübingen, said: “This study challenges one of the biggest assumptions of modern preventive medicine. For years, people with prediabetes have been told that losing weight, exercising more and eating healthy food will prevent heart attacks and early death. While these lifestyle changes are undoubtedly valuable, “Evidence does not support that they reduce heart attacks or mortality in people with prediabetes.”
Birkenfeld added, “Instead, we show that overcoming prediabetes is associated with a marked reduction in fatal cardiac events, heart failure, and all-cause mortality.”
Prediabetes is a condition where blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetes.
Previous studies had shown that combined lifestyle changes, including more exercise and healthy eating, do not reduce cardiovascular disease. This suggests that delaying the onset of diabetes alone does not guarantee cardiovascular protection unless significant metabolic changes occur.
“The results of the study mean that prediabetes remission, along with lowering blood pressure, lowering cholesterol and quitting smoking, may take its place as the fourth major primary prevention tool that actually prevents heart attacks and deaths,” Birkenfeld said.
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