Nearly 20.8 million Americans are affected by diabetes, and approximately 30% of them don’t even know that they have diabetes. Routinely taking tests for diabetes is important because sometimes people have no symptoms at all. Therefore, for some tests for diabetes is the only way that diabetes will be detected before it causes serious harm to your body. According to the Joslin Diabetes Center, you should periodically get diabetes tests administered if:
- You have a parent or sibling with diabetes
- You are overweight
- You are a member of a high risk ethnic group such as African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Asian American, or Pacific Islander
- You have had gestational diabetes before or have a baby weighing over 9 pounds
- You have high blood pressure
- You have polycystic ovarian syndrome
- In previous tests, diabetes was not diagnosed but you had an impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting tolerance result
