What's New in the ADA's Latest Diabetes Guidelines?

Today I am going to discuss the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 2015 Standards of Care.^[1]

Each year a new Standards of Care is published and each year they change a little bit from the prior year and incorporate some of the newest and most interesting findings in the treatment of diabetes.

This year they tackled the really big issue that was brought up by the change in the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) lipid treatment guidelines. The ADA now is publishing its own take on this issue. But I will discuss that later. First, I am just going to go through some of the more minor changes in the recommendations.

First, the cut-off point for screening Asians in terms of their BMI is now 23 instead of 25, and this is because Asians develop diabetes or a risk for diabetes at a lower BMI than non-Asians. It is important to know that and to screen at a lower BMI.

Second, they recommend that people be more physically active during the day, particularly people who are sitting for 90 or more minutes at a time. They recommend that people get up and move around, which I personally think is a very good idea because we all sit too much at work and therefore don't get enough daily activity.