Risks, Symptoms, and Tests

Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes by far—making up more than 90% of the 21 million cases in the U.S. Experts use words like "epidemic" and "worldwide crisis" when they talk about it: Millions of people have it and a staggering number are expected to get it (300 million worldwide by 2025, according to one study....  Read More

For centuries, diabetes testing mostly consisted of a physician dipping his pinkie into a urine sample and tasting it to pick up on abnormally high sugar. Thankfully, testing for type 2 diabetes is lot easier now—at least for doctors...  Read More

Can poor sleep boost your risk of developing diabetes? Maybe. A number of studies have linked poor sleep with a higher risk of diabetes, but researchers are still sorting out if one can cause the other or they're linked for some other reason...  Read More

Prediabetes is an incredibly common condition in which blood sugar is higher than it should be, but isn't quite high enough to be type 2 diabetes. At least an estimated 57 million people in the United States, including more than 40% of those aged 40 to 74, are thought to have prediabetes...  Read More

Excess weight is probably the number one risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Yes, other factors, such as genes and aging do play a role in type 2 diabetes.

But an International Obesity Task Force estimated in 2003 that 60% of diabetes cases around the world were due to weight gain, and in Western nations it was closer to 90%...  Read More

If you have prediabetes, one of the most important things you can do to avoid diabetes is to change your diet and increase your exercise.

In a study published in 2002 by the Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group, people with prediabetes slashed their risk of diabetes by more than half...  Read More