Whoever said, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” likely was not talking about diabetes.

Our ability to live a healthy life with diabetes depends largely on what we do know about it, and it starts with knowing if we have it.

Jean Kostak, a certified diabetes care and education specialist at UConn Health, says about 30 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, “but a number of people don’t even know that they have it,” she tells the UConn Health Pulse podcast. “So they’re walking around with diabetes that could be impacting their health and just haven’t gotten to the doctor to get it diagnosed.”

Then there are those who truly don’t have diabetes… yet.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 88 million American adults have prediabetes, and more than four in five of them are unaware.

“They have kind of the precursors to have type two diabetes,” Kostak says. “They’re probably overweight, not eating healthy, those kinds of lifestyle things that could impact their blood sugars, especially if they’re at risk with the family history piece of it.”

As a fourth-year student at the UConn School of Medicine, Martina Sinopoli worked with UConn Health dietitians and endocrinologists to develop an online resource for people with diabetes or prediabetes. Her website, “Small Changes in Diet, Big Changes in Health,” a collection of recipe alterations to create healthier versions of favorite foods, remains in UConn Health’s diabetes education program toolbox even now that Sinopoli has graduated.

Now a psychiatry resident at Harvard, Sinopoli had her own struggles with prediabetes in her teens.

“Because of my history with this, it kind of led me into the field of medicine and it leads me to still liking to do diabetes education,” Sinopoli says.

Listen to the entire conversation with Sinopoli and Kostak in the July episode of the UConn Health Pulse podcast.

Learn more about diabetes care at UConn Health, or call 860-679-2626 for a consultation.