 Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of SugarMD, the ultimate diabetes channel. We talk about diabetes, we talk about insulin resistance, we talk about weight loss, you name it, everything about metabolism. I am Dr. Ahmet Ergin. I'm an endocrinologist and a diabetes educator practicing in Florida and New York. Today, I'm going to talk to you about who needs testing for diabetes. Now, I know a lot of you have diabetes, but most of you also have pre-diabetes or insulin resistant and you want to know if you need to be tested right now. Let's talk about that. So, if you are between age 40 and 70, which I think majority of my viewers are, and you are overweight or obese, especially if you have abdominal obesity, that is a huge risk factor. So, after age 40, if you have not been tested, please get checked. Now, your doctor may be doing just simple blood work, like a basic metabolic panel and stuff like that, like that just shows you your fasting blood sugar. That may not always be positive, so you may want to get tested for A1c and sometimes even 2-hour glucose tolerance test can help to diagnose diabetes. Now, if you do not have these risk factors, but you are 45 or above, you definitely want to get checked. That's the time where people start getting diabetes. Even if you are fit and you may think that, oh, hey, I work out. I do great. You know, I eat well. If it isn't your genes, it may happen to you because not every diabetes is type 2 diabetes. If you never heard of it, there's something called type 3 diabetes or 1.5 diabetes. Some people call it 1.5. Some people call it type 3. It can happen around age 40, 45. Sometimes even earlier, and then you don't necessarily have to be overweight or obese for that to happen. So definitely, if you are age 45 or above, make sure to get checked. So if you guys want more information, as you can see at the book right here, tells you more than enough information you want to know, 366 pages. If you have diabetes, you read this book, you can basically teach your doctor what to do. Don't do that. He's going to be mad or she's going to be mad, but you know what I mean. And then the other thing is if you have something called acontosis naracans, now a lot of people don't know what that is, but it is basically a velvety tissue that is typically behind your neck or under your axilla armpits or the creases where your body creates creases. There is generally like brownish area that's more softer, especially happen in overweight individuals, a sign of insulin resistance. If you have that, make sure you get checked for diabetes as well, because typically, you know, I've seen this happen even like eight, nine year old kids developing type 2 diabetes and they ask me, hey doc, what is this, you know, all my, you know, this brownish spots on my, on my body. And that's acontosis naracans. You can see in the picture right here. But if you have that, definitely I get checked for diabetes. So if you have risk factors for heart disease, like your family history of heart disease, for example, and many of the risk factors for heart disease actually accompanies the risk factors for type 2 diabetes, such as if you have high triglycerides, if you have a low HDL in your blood, like we discussed about abdominal obesity, if you have high blood pressure, these are also risk factors for heart disease and the obesity. And if you didn't realize this so far in our channel, diabetes or insulin resistance is the primary driving factor for heart disease. And more than two thirds of diabetics actually die from heart attacks. And the other one third die from complications of diabetes other than heart attacks. But cancer is also very common in diabetics. So, you know, contrary to the belief that most diabetics don't go blind or legs cut off or end up in dialysis, the ironic fact is that most of them die from heart attacks before they actually have the chance to develop those severe complications. But people don't really realize that people want to bring your blood sugars down, but they don't really care about their cholesterol as much. They don't care about their blood pressure as much. And that's a huge mistake. Like a tripod, you know, if you don't set the one leg right, you will still fall. So I always, you know, try to convince my patients, hey, look, you know, great, you did great job with your blood sugars, but what about your blood pressure? It's still like 160 over 90, you know, you have to do something about this, you know, check your blood sugars, make sure you're on top of your cholesterol as well. So, but anyways, back to the topic, I'm sorry, too much tangential here. But bottom line is, if you have risk factors for heart disease, definitely get checked for that and diabetes as well. If you're a woman with polycystic ovarian syndrome, you definitely need to get checked for diabetes. Polycystic ovarian syndrome is just another form of insulin resistance without blood sugars rise, but it can, it definitely is on the path to diabetes. So even children, children over 10 or above, if they have family history of diabetes, if they come from a certain heritage, if they come from certain nationality, like Hispanics are high risk, unfortunately for that. Asian Americans, especially the Asian Americans, I say, because the Asians are doing much better in Asia. And once they come in America, that's not great. So that they start developing diabetes, just because our diet here in Western world is not necessarily as good. So Indian Americans, for example, like Indians also with the lower BMI with the less obesity, like the Chinese or Korean or Filipino, when they develop obesity, they develop diabetes way faster than a typical American would, like when I say typical American, what I mean is like the people who are from European descent Americans, they are more lenient, they can gain more weight before they develop diabetes compared to the Asians. And then if you're pregnant women, definitely get checked. I mean, I think everybody gets checked now after week 24. If you are very high risk, if you develop gestational diabetes in the past, if you already have some problems in your blood sugar, it's definitely perfect to check it earlier. So you don't have to wait 24 weeks to realize that you actually have diabetes. So guys, I hope that was helpful. And if it was, please give a thumbs up, share this video with family and friends, and make sure you leave a comment. Talk to you guys. All right, thank you for watching. And I want you to be more informed and more educated. So to do that, go ahead and watch this next video right here.