More than three million Australians have diabetes or pre-diabetes and a vast number of cases of type 2 diabetes are undiagnosed. Type 2 diabetes is predominantly an unhealthy lifestyle-related disease.

What causes diabetes?

The hormone insulin is like a metabolic traffic cop, allowing glucose into cells where
it's burnt as energy. Too much food means a traffic jam of glucose in the blood, and when that's combined with insufficient exercise, the effect of insulin is overpowered.

Instead of being a vital food source it becomes a demon. Persistent high glucose damages the walls of blood vessels and increases the risk of blood clots. This happens right around the body leading to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease and blindness.

The slippery slope

About 2.7 million of us may have pre-diabetes and, as with type 2, the insulin simply doesn't work as well, which results in higher levels of glucose in the blood. Left untreated, it may turn into type 2 diabetes in five to 10 years.

Simple test and diagnosis

Pre-diabetes is often diagnosed by chance. Your doctor may have ordered a fasting blood glucose test as a routine screening test and it's come back as being greater than 5.5mmols/l. What follows is an oral glucose tolerance test. You fast overnight, drink glucose and your blood glucose is measured over two hours.

If it shows glucose is building up in the bloodstream, the diagnosis is pre-diabetes.

What puts you at risk?

Diabetes risk factors include:

• Family history of diabetes or heart disease.
• A waist measurement greater than 80cm for women or 94cm for a man.
• Becoming a couch potato.
• High blood pressure.
• High LDL or ‘bad' cholesterol, high triglycerides and not enough ‘good' cholesterol.
• Polycystic ovaries.

If you fall into any of these categories, see your doctor for a blood screen and find out your blood pressure, waist size and fasting levels of glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides.

What you can do

A slide towards type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes can be halted. If you can reduce your weight seven per cent, and exercise for more than 21 minutes a day, you may reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent. By becoming physically active you will:

Make your insulin work better and lower the glucose in your blood and lower your blood pressure and blood fats.

• Drop your waist size and achieve a better body weight.
• Increase the strength of your bones to prevent osteoporosis.
• Improve your quality of life.

Your action plan

Here's how to boost your health and stave off the onset of pre-diabetes and essentially type 2 diabetes. Always talk over an activity plan with your doctor. Half an hour of moderate physical activity on most days of the week is ideal.

Up and at 'em - Put your shoes, socks, shorts, shirt and sunscreen at the end of the bed. Fill up your water bottle, put on your hat, pedometer and sunnies and off you go. Find a friend to walk with you. If you're too puffed to chat you're walking too fast; if you can sing you're not going fast enough.

Take steps - Motivate your activity plan with a pedometer. To stay the same weight,
do 10,000 steps a day; to lose a few kilos, slowly work up to 15,000 steps a day. Walk 10 minutes twice a day for the first week, and then gradually make it longer.

Up the ante - Once you've got into the daily walk habit, start interval training. Use
a familiar tree or hill as a starting line, then increase your pace for a minute or two before dropping back to your usual speed. Increase the interval time every other day so you're adding speed-up sections to your walk. ‘Slow then go' ups health benefits 30 per cent.

Breakfast like a king - As well as smaller meal sizes, upping fibre intake, cutting out unhealthy fats and opting for lean meats, here's another tip to beat pre-diabetes: breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, sup like a pauper. Make breakfast your low-GI meal of the day to improve metabolism. Try seed-based bread, rolled oats with fruit, low-fat yogurt and milk.

Knowing the difference

It's vital to note pre-diabetes heads down the road to type 2 or lifestyle-induced diabetes - quite different to the cause and effect of type 1 or juvenile diabetes.

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation CEO Mike Wilson says: ‘The blame culture around diabetes is unfair, especially in the case of type 1 diabetes, which isn't linked to day-to-day diet or exercise,' he says. ‘It's caused by a mixture of genes and factors in our environment that scientists don't yet fully understand.'

What this form of the disease urgently needs is a cure. For more details, visit www.diabetesaustralia.com.au