Preventing and Controlling Type 2 Diabetes
There’s a difference between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. The former is usually diagnosed in childhood and young adulthood, and is usually a disorder of the pancreas in which the body does not produce enough insulin. The latter, however, is typically diagnosed in adulthood and usually begins as an insulin resistance, in which your cells do not use insulin properly and your pancreas gradually loses its capacity for producing it, according to the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. Type 2 diabetes is often brought on by risk factors such as obesity, inactivity, older age, family history of diabetes, and race/ethnicity, the NDIC maintains.
It is important to schedule a check-up with your doctor and discuss your risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. While you can’t do anything to change your age, family history or race/ethnicity, you can certainly take action to stave off obesity and inactivity.
The National Diabetes Education Program has a very helpful list of More Than 50 ways to Prevent Diabetes on its website. Many of them have to do with diet and exercise. Among them are: eating smaller portions of meat (or about the size of a deck of cards); making sure you eat breakfast every day; and eating foods that are low in fat and sodium. They also have helpful tips that advise you to eat while listening to music, rather than while watching television, because people tend to eat more while they’re watching television. Another helpful tip was to eat slowly, because it takes about 20 minutes for the message to be transferred from your stomach to your brain that you are full!
Living a more active lifestyle can also help you drop weight, reducing your risk of Type 2 diabetes. Aside from recommending regular exercise, the site also has helpful tips for everyday life like parking as far away as you can from your favorite store in the mall to get some walking in and taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work to get your blood moving.
This is all well and good, but let’s say you’ve already been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. What then? Studies have shown that the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes can also be managed and controlled through diet and exercise, along with the treatment plan put into place by your doctor. Some even claim a lifestyle change can reverse the effects of Type 2 diabetes! Either way, the health benefits make diet and exercise definitely worth a shot.
If you enjoyed this article, please bookmark it at del.icio.us »
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
