From chroniclelive.co.uk
A health expert says that if you want to reduce the risk of diabetes, the key aspects are keeping a healthy weight and keeping physically active
A doctor has outlined ways that can help to prevent and potentially even reverse type 2 diabetes.
In the UK, around seven million people are estimated to have prediabetes - and, as a result, have a high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes occurs when blood sugar levels are abnormally high, but lower than the threshold for diagnosing diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is a common condition that causes the level of sugar (glucose) in the blood to become too high. It can cause symptoms like excessive thirst, needing to urinate a lot and tiredness. But, many people have no symptoms, the NHS says.
Speaking to Jonathon Wolf on his health-focused podcast show, ZOE, Professor Naveed Sattar shed light on preventing, treating, and potentially reversing type 2 diabetes. Naveed is a medical doctor and Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Starting off the episode by explaining to listeners one of the biggest myths of diabetes, Professor Sattar said: "My patients' biggest myth often when I tell them that they may have type 2 diabetes, or at risk is, that they don't eat much sugar. But type 2 diabetes is a disease of excess weight to a level in themselves that leads to too much fat in the wrong places - including within the liver.
He later added: "People no longer store fat peripherally and that excess fat gets deposited into some of the key organs in the body that are exquisitely sensitive to too much fat which will disrupt their ability to control sugar levels." When asked by Jonathan if there is a difference between men and women in terms of their risks of diabetes, the professor warned: "Women have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than men, for reasons linked to where they store body fat."
In terms of reversing your risk of getting type 2 diabetes, Professor Sattar said: "If you want to reduce the risk of diabetes, the key aspects are keeping a healthy weight as much as you possibly can and keeping relatively physically active. Those are the two major things, as you cannot stop aging."
Going into depth about how damaging too much sugar can be to your body after a long period of time, he said: "High sugars immediately do not cause damage, it takes about five to 10 to 15 years. The older you become to get diabetes, the slower your sugar will elevate, because it's less linked to weight gain.
"The younger you develop diabetes, it's more toxic and it's a more toxic disease. Sugar levels rise faster and you tend to have to need more weight. The reason you tend to need to have more weight to trigger diabetes is because when you're young, you tend to have a bigger muscle and your pancreas is healthier.
"So in other words, to overcome those and to have better buffering capacity, when you're younger you need to stress the system more by putting more fat in the wrong places." However, the expert added: "But that comes with all the other risk factors."
For clarification, Jonathan asked: "So what you're saying is that if I can hold getting diabetes off till I'm 75, then at that point maybe you could start to eat chocolate all day?" Sattar replied: "I wouldn't necessarily say that, but I'm less worried about diabetes because it's not going to massively impair my life expectancy, if at all.
"It's not going to lead me to have a raging eye, kidney or nerve disease, if at all. Whereas, if you're in your 40s and 50s and you're in pre-diabetes, some small sustainable lifestyle changes can help."
Suggesting steps people can take to lower their risk or prevent themselves from getting diabetes, Sattar says you could either put on a bit more muscle mass, while staying the same weight, or lose three-four kilograms, and sustain that via healthy diet and activity to avoid you putting the weight back on.
He said: "That will probably delay you developing diabetes for five or 10 years. Some people can delay this for a long time or even revert to normal sugar levels so it's effectively improving your muscle mass, cutting your weight ectopic fat sufficiently enough to de-stress your glucose control mechanisms."
About 25 years ago Sattar says he was a bit heavier and his signals for diabetes were incredibly high. But now, it has come down because he's built more muscle mass, got rid of a few pounds and made some lifestyle changes. "I've also made some dietary changes as well," he told Jonathan. "Cutting out some of the refined sugars, increasing the variety of the foods I eat including more fibre rich foods."
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/health/three-ways-prevent-potentially-reverse-28915527
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