Escape the Diabetes Trap

“How’s your blood sugar?” While this isn’t a popular topic of conversation around the office water cooler or at the dinner table, it may be the most important health question anyone could ask.

Elevated levels of blood sugar lead to Type 2 diabetes, a slow and debilitating killer that, believe it or not, can be avoided.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have estimated that at least 90 percent of Type 2 diabetes can be prevented with relatively simple lifestyle changes. Given that the disease has dire consequences, including nearly double the risk of heart disease and complications such as kidney failure, blindness and nerve damage that leads to amputations, it may seem odd that lifestyle has such a dramatic impact. Nevertheless, it does.

Technically speaking, Type 2 diabetes is an incurable disease and health professionals who claim to offer a cure are viewed with skepticism by their peers. However, men and women who have made significant changes in their diet and exercise habits have stably reduced blood sugar to normal levels, becoming essentially free of the disease.

When it comes to prevention, lifestyle is recognized as the best strategy. In short- and long-term studies of overweight people at high risk for the disease, a 5 percent weight loss (for example, a loss of 10 pounds for a 200-pound person), along with a healthy diet and regular exercise, have proved twice as effective as a commonly prescribed medication.

Trap Basics

These popular but unhealthy lifestyle habits lead to elevated blood sugar and build the diabetes trap:

• Eating too much refined food with an overabundance of calories, unhealthy fat, starch and sugar, and not enough fiber. Candy, donuts, toaster pastries, some cereals, hamburger and hot dog buns, other bread made with refined flour, deep-fried food and thick, creamy sauces all fit the unhealthy bill.

• Habitually drinking regular or diet soda.

• Sitting around too much instead of using some muscle power. When muscles aren’t used very much, they become reluctant to accept fuel (calories from food), so the fuel goes to storage, otherwise known as body fat.

The Escape Route

If the thought of making sweeping changes is overwhelming, try these three simple steps:

• Maybe you’ve heard “walk 30 minutes each day” so many times that it doesn’t ever register, but try it. And, do some resistance exercises during television commercials. Try lunges or squats and some push-ups. If you do the movements slowly and with good form, you’ll also be using the muscles surrounding your midsection, which include the infamous abs. If full push-ups are unrealistic, start with your hands against a wall. Aside from commercial-free channels, one hour of television includes at least 15 minutes of advertising, and these little workouts can make a difference in your health.

• Eat food that doesn’t come in packages, as much as possible. In restaurants, anything grilled, broiled, poached, or steamed is generally a good choice, as long as it isn’t swimming in a creamy sauce.

• If you drink soda, switch to seltzer or bubbly mineral water (if you like bubbles). A spritz of lemon, lime, or orange enhances flavor. Unsweetened tea or coffee (iced or hot) are also good choices. Some studies show that both of these beverages ward off diabetes.

We’re so accustomed to serious illnesses being beyond our control that the lifestyle-diabetes connection may seem stranger than fiction. Thankfully, that’s not the case. Type 2 diabetes is “almost totally preventable,” according to Robert Rizza, M.D., a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and former president of the American Diabetes Association. “If you stay lean and fit,” he says, “you reduce your chances of getting the disease by 95 percent.”