Lowering blood sugar levels to normal may cut the risk of serious heart problems by more than half in people with prediabetes, according to new research from King’s College London.
The study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, found that returning blood sugar to a healthy range—essentially reversing prediabetes—can lower the chance of dying from heart disease or being admitted to the hospital for heart failure by over 50%.
This is an important discovery, especially since past studies have shown that lifestyle changes alone—like eating better, exercising, and losing weight—don’t reduce the risk of heart problems in people with prediabetes.
These new findings offer a fresh, potentially life-saving goal for treating prediabetes and preventing heart disease. It could also mean a big shift in how doctors treat these patients.
For many years, people with prediabetes have been told that lifestyle changes would protect them from heart attacks and early death. And while healthy habits are always good, the new research suggests that unless blood sugar is actually brought back to normal, the risk of heart disease remains high.
Dr. Andreas Birkenfeld, the study’s lead author, explained that the key point is not just delaying diabetes, but actually reversing prediabetes. His team found that people who successfully returned their blood sugar to normal had much lower rates of heart failure, heart attacks, and even death.
Prediabetes means that a person’s blood sugar is higher than normal, but not high enough to be called type 2 diabetes. It often leads to type 2 diabetes over time, but it also increases the chance of getting heart disease, one of the top causes of death worldwide.
In the UK, one in five adults has diabetes or prediabetes. In the US, it’s over one in three, and in China, about four in ten people are affected. Around the world, more than a billion people are estimated to have prediabetes.
Dr. Birkenfeld and his team looked at long-term data from two important studies: the US Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study and the Chinese DaQing Diabetes Prevention Outcomes Study. These studies followed people with prediabetes for many years, encouraging them to eat healthy and be more active.
The new analysis showed that people who reversed their prediabetes had a 58% lower risk of dying from heart problems or being hospitalized for heart failure. Even decades later, the benefits were still seen. These individuals also had a 42% lower risk of having heart attacks, strokes, or other serious heart-related issues.
The findings were similar in both the US and Chinese groups, showing that the effect is likely the same for different populations.
Interestingly, earlier reports from the same studies showed that lifestyle changes alone did not reduce heart disease risk. This means that just delaying diabetes is not enough—getting blood sugar back to normal is what truly helps the heart.
Dr. Birkenfeld believes that reversing prediabetes should now be seen as a major tool to prevent heart disease, alongside other proven strategies like lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, and quitting smoking.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about bananas and diabetes, and honey could help control blood sugar.
For more health information, please see recent studies about Vitamin D that may reduce dangerous complications in diabetes and results showing plant-based protein foods may help reverse type 2 diabetes.
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