As we all know eating right and excersising can make us healthier....but remember genetics play a factor too. Coming from a family history of Diabetes I felt the need to address how your journey can turn your life around. Let's look at the facts and myths...
How does diabetes happen? The causes are not totally understood. What is known is that simply eating too much sugar is unlikely to cause diabetes. Instead, diabetes begins when something disrupts your body's ability to turn the food you eat into energy.
To understand what happens when you have diabetes, keep these things in mind: Your body breaks down much of the food you eat into glucose, a type of sugar needed to power your cells. A hormone called insulin is made in the pancreas. Insulin helps the cells in the body use glucose for fuel.
Several myths associated with Diabetes:
1. Eating too much sugar causes diabetes.
2. There are too many rules about choosing foods that are OK in a diabetes diet.
3. You have to give up all your favorite foods when you're on a diabetes diet.
Type 1 diabetes can’t be prevented, but type 2 diabetes has modifiable risk factors which can help you lower your risk for the disease.
Certain diabetes risk factors like age, family history, and ethnicity cannot be changed. However, changing other diabetes risk factors by eating a healthier diet and increased physical activity -- with or without weight loss -- may help prevent type 2 diabetes.
A study done by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that being overweight and obese was the single most important risk factor that predicted who would develop type 2 diabetes. During a 16 year follow-up period, study results showed that regular exercise -- at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week -- and an improved diet that's low in fat and high in fiber significantly helped with type 2 diabetes prevention. The bottom line: type 2 diabetes prevention could be as easy as adopting healthy lifestyle habits.
In another study, the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study Group, researchers reviewed the effects of weight loss, diet, and exercise on type 2 diabetes prevention in more than 500 people who were overweight and also had pre-diabetes or borderline diabetes with an impaired oral glucose tolerance test. They concluded that with changes geared at weight loss and improving physical activity levels, people at high risk of developing diabetes could reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by more than 50%.
If you're at high risk for diabetes, here's your to-do list from the new guidelines:
Lose extra weight. Moderate weight loss -- 7% of your weight -- may cut diabetes risk.
Cut fat and calories from your diet. That should help with weight loss.
Skip low-carb or high-protein diets. They may not work out in the long run.
Get plenty of fiber. Get 14 grams of dietary fiber for every 1,000 calories you eat.
Go for whole grains. Make at least half your grains whole grains.
Get regular physical activity. Go for 2.5 hours per week
Your daily habits can tilt you towards or away from developing diabetes, and it's never too late to make a positive change.
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