Diabetes

Avoiding Diabetes

Many different aspects of your health affect whether or not you develop diabetes. Some of these factors are outside of your control, including:

Age. If you are over 45, you are at a heightened risk. And up to 20 percent of Americans over age 65 have diabetes.
Heredity. If a parent had diabetes, you are more likely to also develop the disease.
Ethnicity. Various minority groups in the United States are more likely than white Americans to develop diabetes. These groups include African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans. We do not yet fully understand the reasons why.

If you fall into one or more of these high-risk groups and have not yet developed diabetes, you should be especially concerned about reducing your risks as much as possible. If you do already have Type 2 diabetes, you can control the course of your disease and how well you live with it by working to lower your risk factors.

What You Can Do

Although you cannot change your age, heredity or ethnicity, you can control a number of risk factors for developing diabetes, such as:

high blood pressure
high cholesterol
an inactive – also called “sedentary” – lifestyle.

Here are some things you can do.

Treat related conditions.

Various treatments to lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol will help reduce the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes. However, the single most important way to reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes is to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly.

Develop healthy habits.

Some people have an increased chance – also called a “predisposition” - of getting diabetes due to heredity. Studies have shown that these individuals can lower their risk dramatically by making some sensible lifestyle changes:

Eat better.

Lose weight.

Exercise regularly.

Stop smoking.

People who are overweight are at greater risk of becoming insulin resistant and eventually developing diabetes. That's because excess weight makes the cells more resistant to glucose.

Recent studies have shown that nutrition and exercise programs can decrease the development of diabetes in high-risk groups by as much as 71 percent.

Bonus Benefits

When you eat well, lose weight, and begin a regular exercise program, there are bonus benefits. In addition to cutting your risk of developing diabetes, these good lifestyle choices also protect you against a whole host of other diseases and medical conditions, including:

cardiovascular disease
various cancers.

And exercise increases your energy and helps you feel great!

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Last Reviewed: Dec 07, 2012

Robert M Cohen, MD
Professor of Clinical Medicine
College of Medicine
University of Cincinnati

Bette K Idemoto, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC, CCRN
Clinical Nurse Specialist
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing
Case Western Reserve University