Just before the publication of Stop Diabetes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the American Diabetes Association began to use the new term “pre-diabetes” to describe the condition in which blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not yet diabetic — also known as impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose. Studies show that most people with this condition go on to develop type 2 diabetes within 10 years.

Prediabetes is a lot better name than impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose. It’s also a lot better name than Stop Diabetes (even though the usual style is to hyphenate it as pre-diabetes). As far as I know, this is the only popular book out there at the moment that is specific to pre-diabetes.

Gretchen’s mantra is “eat less and move more.” It’s a great way to focus all of us with diabetes or pre-diabetes alike on the essentials of control.

But Gretchen now believes that for people with pre-diabetes just “eating less and moving more may not be enough.” She writes me that “people with prediabetes should be willing to do more than people who might not actually be at risk.”

Therefore, she added three new tips (numbers 1 through 3 of the 50 great tips in this important book). That’s the same number of tips she had in Stop Diabetes, since she deleted three of the least important.

Disclosure: Gretchen Becker and I have worked together for years and I consider her a friend. I also consider her one of the very best writers about diabetes (and pre-diabetes). Her The First Year — Type 2 Diabetes is one of the two best books ever written about diabetes.

Marlowe & Company in New York will publish Prediabetes January 15. ISBN 1569244642. This 200-page trade paperback lists for $14.95.