December 9, 2011
Small lifestyle changes can prevent diabetes
Although diabetes is an epidemic affecting 25.8 million Americans, many people are unaware that they have the disease. They may never experience its most common symptoms: unusual thirst, frequent urination, blurred vision or a feeling of being tired most of the time for no apparent reason. In other cases, these symptoms appear so gradually that they are not recognized.
Being unaware of symptoms is also common for 79 million Americans with “prediabetes.” Without their knowledge, they are at a health crossroads. While they are likely to develop Type 2 diabetes over time, they can delay or prevent its onset with small lifestyle changes.
Savor a few treats, but only on an actual holiday, to avoid end-of-year weight gain.Gillian
Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, is caused by insulin resistance. The pancreas produces insulin, but the bodys cells do not respond adequately. Before people develop Type 2 diabetes, they almost always have prediabetes. For this reason, the American Diabetes Association recommends that people who are overweight and age 45 or older should be checked for prediabetes during their next routine medical visit.
Your health care professional may recommend testing at an earlier age if you are overweight and have other risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, such as family history, high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol or high triglycerides. In the United States, 25 percent of people over 65 have diabetes, and the Hispanic (non-Cuban), Asian, American Indian and African-American communities also have higher rates of the disease. For women, gestational diabetes and giving birth to a baby weighing more than 9 pounds are additional risk factors.Being checked for prediabetes involves either a fasting plasma glucose test or an oral glucose tolerance test. Both require an overnight fast. In the first, your blood glucose is measured in the morning before eating. In the second, your blood glucose is checked both after fasting and two hours after drinking a glucose-rich drink.
These tests report blood glucose levels on a scale for normal, prediabetic and diabetic. Due to the health risks associated with prediabetes, treatment is recommended for any results above normal. You will receive counseling about cardiovascular risk factors such as tobacco use, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
You will also learn that it is not too late to prevent diabetes. Research shows that even losing 10 pounds is beneficial, and this goal can be achieved through diet and moderate exercise, such as walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week.
Walking in the snow is one way to get winter exercise.Mike Gifford
Because preventing weight gain is easier than losing weight, I remind patients that only Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day are holidays. They can maintain a healthy diet by limiting their indulgences to these three days and by being careful about food choices, fat content and portion sizes during the rest of the holiday season.In the NIH study, the researchers also found that people who were more physically active had less holiday weight gain. With this in mind, I encourage my patients to keep walking. This natural form of exercise requires no special equipment or gym membership, and it can help people of all ages “walk away” from the diabetes epidemic.
Victoria Fang, M.D., is a board-certified internal medicine doctor at the UW Neighborhood Clinic – Federal Way. For more information, call (800) 852-8546 or visit www.uwmedicine.org/uwpn.
