遠在天邊,近在眼前的心臟健康風險

Last spring, I finally made it into my nurse practitioner's office for a physical, my first one in about five years. (I'd been pregnant twice, moved across the country, bought and sold my first house-I'd been busy!) What I learned from my blood test results shocked and scared me: I was prediabetic.

去年春天，我終於去全科護士那兒做了身體檢查，這是我5年來第一次檢查身體。（我懷了2次孕、搬過家、買了又賣了第一套房子--我真的很忙啊！）但我的血液檢測結果卻讓我大吃一驚、可把我給嚇壞了：我患有前驅糖尿病。

Prediabetes isn't a disease the way pneumonia or cancer is; it's more like a big, flashing red warning that you're headed in the wrong direction. "It's a sign you may develop type 2 diabetes in the future," says John Buse, MD, director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

前驅糖尿病和肺炎、癌症不一樣，它更像是一個巨大的、閃着燈的紅色警告：你正朝着錯誤的方向前進。"前驅糖尿病意味着你可能會患2型糖尿病，"北卡羅來納州教堂山北卡羅來納州立大學糖尿病護理中心的主任約翰·布斯醫學博士說道。

As a longtime health journalist, I know having type 2 diabetes is no joke: That condition can double a person's risk of dying of heart disease, the number one killer of American women. It's also linked to many cancers and, if left untreated, to nerve and kidney damage and vision problems. But prediabetes can be harmful, too. "Even at the prediabetic stage, there's an increased risk for heart disease and stroke," says Don Kain, a certified diabetes educator at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. (In fact, prediabetes alone increases your risk of heart disease by 10 percent.)

入行健康記者多年，我知道患有2型糖尿病並不是鬧着玩的。這一症狀會使人們死於心臟病的風險翻倍，心臟病是美國女性的頭號殺手。2型糖尿病也與很多癌症相關，如果不加以治療，會導致神經和腎臟受損、導致視力問題。但前驅糖尿病也會給人們帶來危害。"即使在前驅糖尿病階段，人們患心臟病和中風的風險也會增加，"波特蘭俄勒岡健康與科學大學的持證糖尿病教育專家Don Kain說道。（事實上，僅僅只是前驅糖尿病就能使人們患心臟病的風險增加10%。）

Prediabetes is easy to diagnose via a simple blood test called the A1C, which measures how much of your hemoglobin-a redblood-cell protein-has sugar attached to it. (Below 5.7 percent is normal, and anything between that and 6.4 is considered prediabetic; 6.5 and above earns you a diabetes diagnosis.) Yet even though nearly a third-29 percent- of American women are prediabetic, almost 90 percent of them don't know it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

通過一種簡單的血液測試（A1C）測量你的血紅蛋白（一種紅細胞蛋白）上含有多少糖，就可以診斷出你是否患有前驅糖尿病。（5.7%以下是正常的，5.7%-6.4%之間則爲前驅糖尿病，6.5%及以上則被診斷爲糖尿病。）疾病預防與控制中心表示，然而，儘管近三分之一的美國女性患有前驅糖尿病（29%），其中近90%的人卻對此並不知情。

One of the biggest concerns with having too much sugar circulating in your blood is that it may trigger chronic inflammation that in turn is associated with everything from heart attack and cancer to Alzheimer's.

血液中含有太多糖引發的最大擔憂就是：可能會引發慢性炎症，這反過來又與一系列疾病相關，包括心臟病發作、癌症和阿爾茲海默症。