Delay diabetes with a simple change of lifestyle

Researchers from the U.S. and China have found diabetes can either be prevented or delayed with a simple change of lifestyle. Diabetes will affect more than 380 million by 2025.

Researchers from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that diet and exercise can reduce the number of people who are affected by diabetes considerably. They analyzed 577 high-risk Chinese adults and studied their eating and exercise patterns for more than 20 years. They found that those who changed their diet and exercised more reduced their likelihood of getting diabetes by about 43 per cent. Volunteers were split into three groups and one group was given an improved diet, another was given a better exercise and the third a combination of both. They were all then compared to a normal group. In an article they wrote in the journal Lancet, the researchers didn’t specify what foods they recommended or what exercises they wanted from volunteers. Gunagwei Li, China-Japan Friendship Hospital submitted this finding:

At the end of the 20 years, 80 percent of those who changed what they ate and exercised more had diabetes, compared with 93 percent who made no changes. This study has shown that ... group-based interventions targeting lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise produce a durable and long-lasting reduction in incidence of type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes affects more than 246 million adults worldwide and accounts for nearly 6 per cent of all global deaths. Studies like this will help reduce these numbers. Type 2 diabetes forms the bulk (90 per cent) of the diabetes cases and is closely linked to obesity and physical inactivity. Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease which is usually diagnosed at an early age. The International Diabetes Federation estimates more than 380 million people will have a form of diabetes by 2025. Diabetes growth will likely grow as more developing nations adopt a Western lifestyle. If diabetes is not controlled, too much glucose or blood sugar can damage one's eyes and kidneys. It also leads to heart disease, stroke and amputations.