Additional Insight in Response to Dr. Victor Montori’s Prediabetes Comments in the Minnesota Post

Yesterday the Minnesota Post published an interview with Dr. Victor Montori, an endocrinologist who specializes in diabetes at the Mayo Clinic, which provided his perspective on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent campaign designed to drive awareness around prediabetes. In the piece, Dr. Montori provided criticism of the recent marketing initiative inquiring as to the necessity for the CDCs efforts and even begging the question as to whether prediabetes is a legitimate medical condition in the first place.  He then refuted many of the stats from the CDC and the American Diabetes Association related to the rapidly growing health epidemic and its related consequences.

We will let the physician community and government agencies decide whether Dr. Montori viewpoints demand a more formal response, however, at Solera Health we do take issue with his claims that advance diagnosis of the disease and coordinated efforts to reverse prediabetes are meritless and will only put further burden on America’s healthcare systems.

On the contrary, the CDC’s efforts to educate at-risk patients about the condition and arm them with the tools for self-diagnosis  has the potential to actually reduce the burden on our healthcare resources by taking the fight against prediabetes out of the physician’s office and into the communities in which individuals live, work and play.

In response to the growing health threat that prediabetes brings to our current population the CDC launched the National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) designed to empower at-risk patients with the tools to prevent and or/control the disease virtually or at the hyper-local level and away from hospitals and doctors’ offices. Today there are over 750 CDC-certified national, digital or hyper-local DPPs that are already showing demonstrable success for helping individuals make the necessary lifestyle modifications to get healthy and keep chronic disease at bay. These programs are aiding at-risk patients with wellness experts and support to reverse the onset of type 2 diabetes through weight loss, exercise and healthy eating habits.

• At the YMCA more than 31,000 participants in their DPP have lost an average of 5.6% of their body weight (YMCA)
• Intervention programs delivered outside of a healthcare setting have been shown to reduce the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes by 58% in all adults and by 71% for people 60 years and older (American Journal of Managed Care)
• Prediabetic patients who were able to lose 10% of their body weight through lifestyle changes reduced risk for type 2 diabetes by 85%. Those who lost 5-7% of their weight slashed their risk by 54% (John Hopkins University)
• Intensive lifestyle intervention aimed at lowering a pre-diabetic’s weight by 7% resulted in a 58% lower incidence of diabetes then patients receiving a placebo and 39% lower than the group receiving the drug Metforim (New England Journal of Medicine)
• If you do have prediabetes, research shows that doing just two things can help you prevent or delay type 2 diabetes: Lose 5% to 7% of your body weight, which would be 10 to 14 pounds for a 200-pound person; and get at least 150 minutes each week of physical activity, such as brisk walking. (CDC)

 These numbers are certifiable and demonstrate that a community-based approach to chronic disease prevention is effective today. It’s only by offering at-risk patients a choice in DPPs and a personalized approach to type 2 diabetes prevention that aligns with their unique health and wellness needs that true success can be achieved in combating a very real health threat that is proven to be completely reversible.