Journalist Bill McCarthy talks about his experience with prediabetes.

Express & Star

Journalist Bill McCarthy talks about his experience with prediabetes, and his journey to regain his health. Following a blood test Bill was contacted by a lifestyle coach from Living Well Taking Control (LWTC), after a referral from his GP. LWTC is one of four active providers, one based in Birmingham, commissioned through NHS England to deliver the Healthier You Diabetes Prevention Programme throughout England, which identifies people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and refers them onto a nine-month, evidence-based lifestyle change programme. LWTC has been a national provider of the service since 2016, supporting patients through its free, non-medical, self-management lifestyle programme.

Transcript

00:00 Here we are in Sutton Park and here's me, seven or eight months down the road on an

00:14 NIH course which was designed to deal with people like myself who are diagnosed with

00:22 a condition called prediabetes which is the stage before you actually become diabetic,

00:30 type 2 diabetic that is. And it's all about catching you before you go into that stage,

00:37 that final stage of diabetes. It involves a change of lifestyle including many things

00:43 looking at your weight, your lifestyle, what you eat, how you eat, your stress, how you

00:48 sleep, many, many, many factors which can put you on the road to diabetes as well as

00:54 hereditary conditions. And over the course of the nine months I've managed to take what

01:01 I've been saying on board and change the lifestyle substantially including quite substantial

01:08 weight loss, more than three and a half stone at the moment and feeling so much better,

01:13 fitter and stronger and actually feeling the age that I am at the moment. So it's working

01:20 very well. We'll continue now until July and then by that time I hope to have reached a

01:27 target weight but more importantly to permanently put the road to diabetes behind me. I mean

01:35 how it works is your blood's tested and there's a scale and from 1 to 41 you're considered

01:44 normal, from 42 to 48 you're then what's considered to be pre-diabetic which means you're on the

01:51 road to becoming diabetic and that figure kicks in at 48. And diabetes has a lot of

01:57 problems for people. Symptoms can be all sorts of breathlessness, tiredness. But when you're

02:05 actually do get diabetes the effects can be terrible including stuff like amputations,

02:14 losing your limbs, amputations and even in the worst cases putting an end to you. So

02:23 it's really important that if you are contacted, if your GP does contact you and offer you

02:30 this course that you should take it because it's well worth the effort.

02:34 [Music]

02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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