It can be really scary when a doctor tells you that you have pre-diabetes, or that the results of a glucose test show you're at risk for diabetes. Pre-diabetes is diagnosed when blood glucose is between 100 and 125 mg/dL or when a glucose tolerance test shows the glucose in your blood to be between 140 and 199 mg/dL. But too many times this news is presented in a passive way -- as if it's just something you have to live with.

Actually, studies show, pre-diabetes is just that -- a sign that your body is on the way to getting diabetes. And just as you can lower blood pressure or cholesterol that's in the high normal range, you can prevent diabetes by taking steps to keep it at bay.

To start with, analyze the top risk factors that could be putting you at risk for diabetes. If you have two or more of these risk factors, diabetes could be on the horizon for you, and you might want to pay attention to all strategies that work to protect against it...  Read more

Image by shankar, shiv used under the creative commons attribution license.

Music can't make the demands of caregiving go away, but it can make you more healthfully equipped to plow through those demands. Music therapy is a fascinating and growing field, and you don't have to be the person who's sick to benefit.

In June, the inaugural conference of the International Association for Music and Medicine explored the countless ways tunes can help heal, whether you're recovering from surgery or cancer, coping with grief, having a baby -- or caring for an aging relative.

I saw this in action just last week. My 87-year-old dad is currently in a rehab facility recovering from a small stroke. Because he also has dementia, he's living in a specialized dementia/Alzheimer's wing of the facility. I'd brought my teenage son for a visit -- and he in turn brought his acoustic guitar to entertain his Grandpa. Before we reached my dad's room, the nurses spied the instrument.

Image by shawnchin used under the creative commons attribution share alike license.

Hitting. Kicking. Grabbing. Pushing. Cursing. Biting. Throwing. Scratching. News this week about these explosive and combative behaviors that can appear in someone with mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's underscores just how challenging they are to deal with. (Although I admit, describing these incidents as a "challenge" is like calling a war "a slight disagreement.")

Proof you're not alone:

Aggression can be frightening. More than one third of Alzheimer's caregivers have observed aggressive behavior, finds a new survey from the Alzheimer's Foundation for Caregiving in Canada (AFCC). Almost one in four caregivers is scared or feels threatened by such incidents.

Caregivers don't feel free to discuss it. Two-thirds of caregivers felt free to discuss symptoms like disorientation and mood swings with people outside their immediate family, the AFCC survey also found. But just over half were willing to talk about aggressive acts...  Read more

More people fear a shark attack, plane crash, lightning strike, or snake bite than developing diabetes. Clearly, our fears don't match reality. There's a diabetes epidemic, folks, but -- last I checked -- only a few unfortunate souls were felled by any of the above.

Alas, diabetes denial is not reserved for the undiagnosed. If you're caring for someone with type 2 diabetes, you may encounter resistance to recommended lifestyle changes that can keep diabetes complications at bay. Or this disease may take a backseat to other medical concerns such as Alzheimer's, stroke, or a broken hip. Perhaps the diabetes has already done significant damage. Or maybe he simply ignores the disease.

Whichever camp you fall into, since we're in the middle of American Diabetes Month, I thought this a good time to do a roundup of recent diabetes-related headlines.

Here, reasons readers should be concerned about diabetes -- and suggestions for how to handle the condition...  Read more

Talking about cancer the first time is hard enough. Sharing the demoralizing news that cancer has progressed or recurred is an altogether different kind of hard. How do you gather your courage and keep going -- and continue talking about it -- when the scans show new metastases turning up in your spine, your brain, your lungs, your liver?

This is what happened to one of my favorite bloggers, Jeanne Sather of The Assertive Cancer Patient, this week. She wrote about it bravely in her post Tykerb Fails! Jeanne's perspective -- that this is a time to regroup, focus on herself, get lots of tests, and figure out what to do next -- is healthy and admirable and, most of all, we wish her well.

Guidance from One Who's Been There

I urge everyone in cancer world who's struggling to cope with the ever-changing and exhausting roller coaster of metastatic cancer to read a new book by minister Forrest Church...  Read more

In her 20-year nursing career, award-winning, certified diabetes educator Theresa Garnero, a Caring.com expert, has helped thousands of older adults newly diagnosed with the disease. Theresa has devoted the past 10 years exclusively to diabetes care.

No need to just take my word for it, the uber-respected diabetes blogger Amy Tenderich sings her praises, too, in a recent post titled The Diabetes Educator We All Should See.

Ever since she started tackling this disorder, Theresa has been on the lookout for a useful diabetes guide for the newly-diagnosed, one that could help them manage this complex, often overwhelming, condition in a day-by-day interactive way -- with a little levity to offset the doom-and-gloom that so often accompanies a diabetes diagnosis. Frustrated that nothing like that was available, she teamed up with the American Diabetes Association to pen the just-released Your First...  Read more

The annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology featured a presentation by researchers who found that those with metabolic syndrome -- a cluster of conditions including hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes or pre-diabetes -- were 75 percent more likely to develop colorectal cancer as those without this condition. (Patient education materials about metabolic syndrome often emphasize caution if you're an "apple" shape, because abdominal fat is a major clue to this condition.)

People with metabolic syndrome are already considered to be at higher risk for heart disease and stroke, so this merely adds to the list of things we need to be concerned about if those we're caring for are overweight or obese and suffer from these related conditions.

Using data on 58,000 people collected during the annual National Health Interview Survey, a team led by Donald Garrow and...  Read more

The tough economy is forcing more seniors than ever into bankruptcy, according to a new report, and leading many older people to seek out -- and find -- bargains and discounts available only to them.

In 1991, people 55 years old and up accounted for about 8% of bankruptcy filers, but by last year this group accounted for 22% of all bankruptcies, according to the report by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project.

"While the bankruptcy filing rate for those under 55 has fallen, it has soared for older Americans," according to a USA Today article. "The older the age group, the worse it got — people 65 and up became more than twice as likely to file during that period, and the filing rate for those 75 and older more than quadrupled."

Seniors -- especially those on a fixed income -- are being hit disproportionately hard by factors like the rising costs of consumer goods and gas...  Read more

There's nothing sugary about this news. Last week fellow blogger Stephanie Miles reported on the catchily-named but confusing "doughnut hole," a coverage gap in Medicare Part D prescription drug benefits that choked millions of seniors last year by forcing them to pay full freight for prescription drugs they had been getting cheaply. Faced with this out-of-pocket expense, a sizable chunk of them simply stopped their treatments.

The elderly with chronic conditions are often hardest hit by the doughnut deductible -- this year capped at $4,050 for out-of-pocket costs -- and those with diabetes are no exception. About 10 percent of people with the disease stopped buying their drugs in 2007, according to the report. For those who do keep paying, finances can get pretty tight...  Read more

Last week I wrote about how the A1c test, the current gold standard for monitoring long-term blood sugar control in people with diabetes, may soon be replaced by a new measure, the estimated average glucose (eAG) test.

Now it appears the old A1c test may be put to new use. A team lead by an edocrinologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is recommending that the A1c measure be used to identify potentially millions of people with undetected diabetes.

Current diagnostic tests designed to detect diabetes are limited, according to the team, as they only measure the amount of sugar present at the time a blood sample is taken. The A1c doesn't require a person to fast overnight, another significant advantage over both currently available screening tests: the oral glucose tolerance test and the fasting blood glucose test.

Diabetologists suggest the current screening tests may miss...  Read more