“How long does it take to go from prediabetes to diabetes?”

Time varies from person to person. It sounds like he has multiple risk factors. Healthy weight loss and exercise would go a long way.

Hi,

I am glad to know of your awareness and concern about your son's health. As much as it is worrisome, progress from Prediabetes to Diabetes, does not follow a mathematical pattern but depends more on genetic and lifestyle determinants - Interventions early on with diet and lifestyle changes can help stop the progress in its tracks for type 2 Diabetes. If no intervention is attempted, depending on his lifestyle and diet habits, 3 months is enough time to see the progress depending on his baseline HbA1c level. Monitoring the Hemoglobin A1c every 3 months is recommended to help modify diet and activity and the response to the interventions as a guide.

Yes you should be worried. But the time to full blown diabetes is quite variable & depends a lot on what he is willing to do. The diabetes gene will never go away, so he is susceptible the rest of his life. He needs to watch his diet, exercise (in other words change his life style-not easy) and lose wt. If he can accomplish this he can put off the diabetes indefinitely. But any time he slips & becomes overwt. again, the prediabetes will come back & progress toward diabetes again. So keep after him to change his habits & keep wt. down.

He does NOT need to progress to diabetes if he changes his diet and physical activity. It depends purely on his life-style habits.