Cases of prediabetes are on the rise amongst American teens, with an estimated 1 in 5 teens having consistently elevated blood sugar levels that aren’t yet high enough for a full-blown Type 2 diabetes diagnosis [1]. Fortunately for teens in the prediabetic stage, there’s still time to change course. In tandem with other healthy lifestyle changes, cycle charting can help teen girls avoid Type 2 diabetes down the road by alerting them to hormonal imbalances early on and teaching them to care for their whole-body health.
What is prediabetes?
The American Diabetes Association defines prediabetes as “blood glucose levels that are higher than normal but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.” If your blood sugar levels were a stoplight system, with green being normal levels and red being diabetes, prediabetes would be the yellow light. You need to take action now to make sure you’re not driving through the red light.
A prediabetes diagnosis comes from an abnormal result on any one of three different blood tests.
Hemoglobin A1C
An A1C test reflects how well-controlled your blood sugar has been over the past two to three months. An A1C level of 5.7-6.4% is prediabetes.
Fasting Plasma Glucose
Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) checks your blood sugar level when you haven’t eaten or drunk anything besides water for 8 hours or more. FPG is checked in the morning. An FPG result of 100-125 mg/dL is prediabetes.
Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT)
You’ve likely heard of the glucose tolerance test pregnant women take in their second or third trimester to check for gestational diabetes. An OGTT is the same thing, but in pregnant women their blood sugar is checked one hour after the sugary drink, whereas for other people it’s checked both before the drink and two hours after. A level of 140-199 mg/dL two hours later is prediabetes.
Why does it matter if teen girls are prediabetic?
High blood sugar levels in the prediabetic range are a warning sign for metabolic syndrome, which directly predisposes people to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. That might sound like a problem to worry about another day (or year), but metabolic syndrome isn’t just something you might develop when you’re 50. Young women in their early to mid-twenties can develop metabolic syndrome. Fortunately, cycle charting can help even girls in their early teens identify that they are at risk. The especially good news is that, unlike Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes is avoidable, even if a girl is already prediabetic.
How can cycle charting help prediabetic teen girls?
We’ve discussed before how hormones, including insulin and your reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone, interact with each other. In fact, a 2013 study found that women who had their first periods before age 10 or after age 16 had an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes later in life [3]. Hormonal imbalances, like those caused by too high blood sugar, will often ‘show up’ on a girl’s cycle chart as irregular cycles.
Certainly, irregular cycles aren’t always concerning. They are both expected and normal during the first year or two after a girl’s first period. But if after two years a girl’s periods aren’t consistently between 21 and 35 days long, translating to at least 10 periods in a calendar year, there’s a problem. Irregular cycles outside the two-year window indicate a hormonal imbalance. Recent research found that irregular cycles in teen girls as young as 14 were a strong predictor of metabolic syndrome and severe obesity just 10 years later [2].
A girl who learns to chart her cycle as a young teen has hard data on whether her cycles regulate properly. And the good news is this data collection can be accomplished even with a very basic system (like the Read Your Body app or the teenFEMM app) that doesn’t have a family planning component. A teen charting her cycles also knows if any changes in her cycles occur over time. Especially in the context of prediabetes, she and her mom can bring her personal health data to a provider trained in restorative reproductive medicine to address what needs to happen next.
Cycle charting is also valuable for cycle syncing
Cycle charting isn’t just helpful for a productive doctor’s office visit. When a girl knows the different phases of her cycle and understands the potential mood, energy, and other impacts in each phase, she can understand why, for instance, she feels the way she does before her period. Cycle syncing is the name for the practice of eating, exercising, and aligning your schedule with the different phases of your natural menstrual cycle.
Rather than feeling at the mercy of her fickle body, a teen who is charting can understand that her body is intricately and beautifully designed. She can then choose to pay attention to and cooperate with it compassionately. Since she knows when to expect her period, for instance, she is equipped to act mindfully rather than mindlessly when sugar cravings or mood swings hit, knowing that it’s just a phase. As she learns to listen to her body, including its need for rest around the time of menstruation, she grows her capacity to thoughtfully make other lifestyle changes as well.
The bottom line on why prediabetic teens should chart their cycles
What’s the value of cycle charting for prediabetic teen girls? When a girl learns the goodness of her body, she’s motivated to respect it through healthy lifestyle choices. And when she understands what’s going on inside over the course of her cycle, she gradually gains the body literacy to take an active role in her own physical and emotional health. Prediabetes in teens is a warning sign communicating a need for greater mindfulness about both physical activity and food choices. Cycle charting predisposes a girl to understand why her body is worth caring for and then, with the help of her parents and other caring adults, to take action for improved health.
References:
[1] Andes LJ, Cheng YJ, Rolka DB, Gregg EW, Imperatore G. Prevalence of Prediabetes Among Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States, 2005-2016. JAMA Pediatr. 2020;174(2):e194498. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.4498 [2] Glueck, Charles J et al. “Sex hormone-binding globulin, oligomenorrhea, polycystic ovary syndrome, and childhood insulin at age 14 years predict metabolic syndrome and class III obesity at age 24 years.” The Journal of pediatrics vol. 159,2 (2011): 308-13.e2. doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2011.01.018Additional Reading:
Why do I crave sugar before my period?
Cycle mindfulness: what happens when you teach fertility awareness to teen girls?
