Diabetes Prevention and Management

Diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. With diabetes your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should. Over time this can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease. The good news is type 2 diabetes is preventable and manageable.

There isn’t a cure yet for diabetes, but losing weight, eating healthy food, and being active can really help.

Other things you can do to help:

• Get diabetes self-management education and support like our DEEP classes.
• Take medicine as prescribed.
• Make and keep health care appointments.

DEEP is a 6-class series healthy living class. It focuses on how to live well with type 2 diabetes and is open to everyone. The series gives an overview of diabetes management, exercise, nutrition, complications and prevention, and stress management.

Before developing type 2 diabetes, most people have prediabetes; their blood sugar is higher than normal but not high enough yet for a diabetes diagnosis. Prediabetes can be reversed. Making lifestyle changes—such as losing a small amount of weight and getting more physically active can prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.

Ready to see where you stand? Take the 1-minute prediabetes risk test. If your score shows your risk is high, visit your doctor for a simple blood test to confirm your result.

If you have prediabetes or other risk factors for type 2 diabetes, now is the time to take charge of your health and make a change. With Austin Public Health’s FREE PreventT2 lifestyle change program a trained lifestyle coach will help you learn how to lose weight, become more physically active, eat healthier, and reduce stress.