Protect Yourself from Diabetes

Why do we prefer sweet foods like strawberries to savory ones like cabbage? Our desire for sweetness may be the result of an old and continuing coevolution between animals and plants. Fruits provide us a nutritious, pre-packaged, and colorful source of energy, while the plants that bear them reach spread to otherwise unreachable places whenever we spit out their seeds.

Diabetes is a metabolic disease, the most common form of which is called type 2 (about 90% of individuals with diabetes have type 2). Individuals with diabetes type 2 are insulin resistant, meaning their cells are resistant against the insulin that is produced. With time additionally they begin to produce insufficient insulin. As insulin is the hormone we use to hold glucose to the cells, when there is insufficient insulin, glucose builds up in the blood and isn’t used properly through the cells for growth and. The end result? A greater chance of kidney failure, blindness, coronary disease, heart disease as well as amputation.

Then chances are you have a friend with diabetes type 2. Currently about 8% of people in the US may take a hit. Although the risk increases with age (because insulin production is decreased), childhood diabetes type 2 is rising, a well known fact attributed to the increasingly poor diets and sedentary lifestyles in our children. Alarmingly, rates of diabetes have doubled since 1980. Just how are we able to protect ourselves from contracting the condition?

Since about 80% of people with diabetes type 2 are overweight, there isn’t any denying the hyperlink between being overweight and contracting the disease. A nutritious diet containing low GI foods (for example wholegrains, beans, apples, oranges, sweetcorn) can help. Maintaining a healthy weight and an active lifestyle is essential. Research has clearly shown that aerobic fitness exercise and resistance training coupled with weight reduction helps the body to process glucose and employ insulin effectively. Actually, one study indicates that exercise combined with a respectable diet can reduce the risk of diabetes by a whopping 58%.

What can you do?

1) Screening. The American Diabetes Association recommends diabetes screening for:

everyone 45 years old and older, specially those having a BMI greater than 25.
people younger than 45 who’re overweight and who also provide other risks, such as a genealogy of the disease, high cholesterol or blood pressure level, or perhaps a good reputation for gestational diabetes.

Testing can be a fasting blood sugar test, a dental glucose tolerance test or a hemoglobin A1c.

2) Monitor unwanted weight. The Diabetes Prevention Program, a federally-funded study published in 2002, found that people at high risk for diabetes who exercised for Half an hour five days per week and lowered their consumption of fat and calories could reduce their weight by 5-7% and lower their chance of type 2 diabetes by 58%.

3) Learn your loved ones health background. A family history of diabetes type 2 is one of the strongest risk factors for getting the condition in people living a Western lifestyle. In these societies, the chance of developing diabetes type 2 is all about one in seven if a parent had the disease and was diagnosed before age 50, and about one out of 13 when the parent was diagnosed at a later age. The danger is even higher if both parents had the condition.