Top 5 Diabetes Risk Factors
We have to remember that diabetes is a chronic disease and the only way to protect you is through prevention. Therefore knowing the risk factors of the dreaded disease diabetes and trying your utmost to reduce or eliminate them is a start. Some diabetes risk factors of diabetes are within your control and others not. Therefore, there is wisdom in knowing the risk factors you can change and the ones you cannot change. Ok back to the question, what are the top 5 risk factors?
Heredity Heredity is one of the main risk factors that we cannot control. I guess you simply cannot change your jeans. You know what I mean genes not jeans. Some people are just predisposed to diabetes. I am scared sometimes since my brother, my father, and my grandfather all suffer from diabetes. What can I do to prevent it happening to me? I can ensure that I try as much as possible to reduce all the other risk factors that are within my control. A healthy lifestyle is definitely within our control. People who suffer from type 1 diabetes or child hood diabetes in most instances cannot do anything to prevent it. This is because type 1 diabetes is as a result of an auto immune reaction. That is, the body attacking itself. Therefore for this type of diabetes eating the best foods or exercising would not prevent it. However, eating a balance well proportioned diet and doing physical activity (exercise) will help in the management of this disease. Obesity Greater weight, unless it is lean muscle, means there is a built up of fat in your body. Body fat interferes with the normal working of the insulin hormone. Remember that the insulin hormone is needed to enable the cells and muscle tissues in the body use glucose. The greater the body fat levels the greater the risk of insulin resistance. Therefore it is important to note that reducing body fat would also mean a reduction in the risk of suffering from diabetes. Losing weight doesn’t have to be a pain. You can have a look at this site talking about the best way to lose weight by simply eating properly. Poor/unhealthy diet Eating all the sugary food in the world and all the hydrogenated fats will not cause diabetes. However the unhealthy diet will cause you to gain weight. Getting fat or being obese as you know will not reduce diabetes risk factors instead it will increase your risk of developing diabetes. This is because fat prevents insulin from working properly. Plus poor diets will starve you body of all the nutrients that it needs to function properly. A proper diet rich in fibre and low in carbohydrate could reverse, delay or even prevent diabetes.
Inactive lifestyle Inactivity or living a sedentary lifestyle is another of the diabetes risk factors. Inactivity will definately along with poor diet cause obesity. I am so tired of that word obesity because slim people do suffer from diabetes also. We have to remember that obesity is one of the main risk factors of diabetes. Most of the other factors seem to lead to it. Over eighty percent of all diabetics are overweight. Again fats interfere with the natural working of insulin, making you insulin resistant. By exercising or doing physical activity for at least thirty minutes per day will reduce insulin resistance. Exercise will cause the cells to use more glucose and so reduce blood glucose levels. The other benefits are ok too like feeling so much better about you and looking great in your clothes. Age I know, everything seems to go wrong with age. For some of my more mature audience, can you remember in your teens when you could eat ten hamburgers for lunch and never gain an ounce? Now if you don’t eat properly you just put on the pounds. I guess that what they called growing up. The scientists believe that as we get older our organs ages as well and don’t work as they used to. So now we have to take better care of our health because with increased age we become prone to suffer from diabetes. Most people who suffer from diabetes tend to suffer from diabetes at about the age of forty (younger if you are in a minority ethnic groups). Maybe the reason is inactivity, eating the wrong type of food, eating oversize food portions, or maybe we are just predisposed to diabetes. It could even be a mixture of the above factors. The truth is no one knows for certain. Therefore we have to do what we can do to reduce all the diabetes risk factors by eating well and doing daily exercises. Daily exercise could include yoga, moderate walking or even a little salsa (side effect: it could spice up the love life). Regular checkups by your health care team would be a good idea also. Resources to help with the reduction of DIET: Learn to control your diet and your diabetes with low glycemic
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