Prevent Pre-Diabetes From Getting Worse
Diabetes is a very serious chronic disease suffered by millions of people worldwide.
If you are diabetic and fail to control your blood glucose levels, you are likely to end up with one or more serious medical conditions, such as heart disease, kidney failure and damaged nerves among many others.
Pre-diabetes is a condition in which your blood glucose levels are higher than they should be but not so high that you are diagnosed as diabetic.
You can not change your past behaviour, your age, or your genes, but you can change your lifestyle.
How your digestive system works
The foods you eat are mostly a combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in various proportions.
A piece of meat, for example, contains mostly protein and fats. Vegetables such as potatoes contain lots of carbohydrates.
When you digest food, it is broken down into its main components, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
These components are then broken down further in your digestive system and released into to your bloodstream which delivers them around your body.
Your energy comes from glucose. Glucose is just a simple sugar. But it is your body’s primary source of energy.
Most glucose comes from digesting the sugar and starch in carbohydrates, which you get from food such as rice, pasta, grains, breads, potatoes, fruits, and some vegetables.
The glucose produced by digestion in your stomach is absorbed into your bloodstream which delivers it to your body’s cells.
Glucose is the fuel for your cells and it powers your movements, thoughts and just about everything else you do.
In order to power your cells, glucose has to get into them. It can only do this with the help of insulin.
Insulin is a hormone (a type of chemical). It is produced by your pancreas.
The pancreas releases insulin into your bloodstream where it travels around your body and meets up with glucose on the same trip. The purpose of insulin is to enable glucose to enter your cells.
To do this, insulin attaches itself to a receptor in the surface of the cell. This causes the cell membrane to allow glucose to enter the cell.
The cell can then use the glucose as its fuel.
This glucose-insulin system has to work properly if you are to be healthy.
If the insulin does not do its job of ‘opening the cell door’ for glucose, the glucose will not be able to get into the cell and the cell will run out of fuel.
Diabetes is a condition in which the glucose-insulin system does not function correctly.
In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce any insulin or, at best, very little.
Type 1 cannot be cured.
The only way these diabetics can survive is by taking regular shots of insulin.
In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas does produce insulin which is released into the bloodstream. But when the insulin arrives at a cell it has trouble attaching itself to a receptor.
Insulin resistance is the condition in which insulin is unable to attach itself to cell receptors.
One of the main reasons for insulin resistance is having cell ‘doors’ that are jammed with fat.
The only way to ‘unjam’ them is to eliminate all fat as far as possible from your diet for four to six weeks minimum until the cell receptors are free of fat.
So what do you have to do to prevent type 2 diabetes developing from pre-diabetes to the full-blown chronic condition with its elevated risks of heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney transplants, leg amputations, and other dreadful conditions?
Change your lifestyle using:
Exercise and Diet
Here are 12 things you can do:
1. Avoid sedentary behaviour
A sedentary lifestyle is one in which you sit most of the day and undertake little physical activity.
The best way to reverse sedentary tendencies is to commit to specific actions you can do every day.
2. Get plenty of exercise
Research indicates that physical exercise increases the insulin sensitivity of cells. When you exercise, less insulin is required to enable your blood glucose to enter your cells.
The trick is to find a physical activity you enjoy and can undertake regularly, and then stick to it for the long-term.
3. Quit smoking
Besides cancers of the lung, breast, prostate, colon, oesophagus and digestive tract, as well as emphysema and heart disease, research indicates that there are strong links between smoking (and exposure to second-hand smoke) and type 2 diabetes.
But quitting reduces this risk over time, not immediately.
4. Lose weight
The majority of people who develop type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese.
In addition, people with pre-diabetes tend to have visceral fat. They carry their excess weight around their middle and abdominal organs such as the liver.
5. Reduce the fat in your diet
To minimise the fat you eat:
make sure that less than 10% of the energy in any food you eat comes from fat
reduce your consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products as much as possible, and focus on foods based on plants (fruit and vegetables).
It’s that simple.
6. Reduce the refined carbs you eat
Refined carbohydrates are refined sugar and grain products that have been milled.
The process removes dietary fibre, vitamins, and minerals from the grains.
Examples of refined carbs include white sugar, granulated sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and so on, as well as white flour, white rice, white pasta, etc.
These are digested more rapidly than unrefined carbohydrates.
This is because simple sugars and refined carbs are digested very quickly and are absorbed rapidly in the bloodstream. This results in a spike in the level of glucose in your blood.
7. Eat a high fiber diet
Dietary fiber is the indigestible portion of plant foods.
There are two types of fibre and eating plenty of both types is crucial for preventing pre-diabetes turning into the full-blown variety.
The main sources of soluble fibre are… legumes (beans, peas, etc), grains (oats, rye and barley), vegetables such as broccoli, carrot and artichokes, root vegetables such as sweet potatoes and onions, and the insides of some fruits such as prunes, plums, berries, bananas, apples and pears.
Insoluble fibre is mostly found in whole grains, wheat and corn bran, nuts and seeds, potato skins, flax seeds, fruit such as avocados and bananas, some skins such as on tomatoes, and vegetables such as green beans.
8. Minimise your intake of processed foods
Processed foods, such as bacon, sausage, salami, breakfast cereals, cheese, vegetables, bread, savoury snacks (crisps, sausage rolls, pies and pasties), cakes and biscuits, microwave meals and so on, are full of oils, added fats, added sugar, refined grains and all sorts of additives.
Processed foods are linked to all sorts of health problems, including diabetes.
9. Restrict portion sizes
Once food hits your stomach, it all starts to be digested at once.
Thus, unsurprisingly, eating too much at one sitting has been shown to cause higher blood sugar and insulin levels in pre-diabetic people.
So, to prevent the onset of diabetes, you need to practice portion control.
10. Drink lots of water, coffee, and tea
Water… lots of it… should be your primary beverage.
Sticking with water most of the time means you will be avoiding beverages that are high in sugar, preservatives, and other questionable ingredients.
So drink plenty of water, at least 2 to 4 litres, a day to stop diabetes developing.
11. Take a daily nutritional supplement
Vitamins are vital for health.
All vitamins fall into one of two main groups, water-soluble or fat-soluble.
Minerals are divided into two groups, major minerals, and trace minerals.
Major minerals are the minerals you need in amounts of 100 milligrams (mg) or more each day.
These minerals are calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sulphur, potassium, sodium, and chloride.
Trace minerals are needed in amounts of less than 100mg each day.
Trace minerals include iron, iodine, zinc, fluoride, selenium, copper, chromium, manganese, and molybdenum.
Minerals are used in a variety of processes.
For example, your body uses calcium to make bones and teeth, and iron to make the hemoglobin in your red blood cells.
Your energy comes from glucose. Glucose is just a simple sugar. But it is your body’s primary source of energy.
Most glucose comes from digesting the sugar and starch in carbohydrates, which you get from food such as rice, pasta, grains, breads, potatoes, fruits, and some vegetables.
The glucose produced by digestion in your stomach is absorbed into your bloodstream, which delivers it to your body’s cells.
Water… lots of it… should be your primary beverage.
Sticking with water most of the time means you will be avoiding beverages that are high in sugar, preservatives and other questionable ingredients.
A large observational study of 2,800 people found that those who consumed more than two servings of sugar-sweetened beverages a day had a 99% increased risk of developing LADA and a 20% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
LADA, latent autoimmune diabetes of adults, is a form of type 1 diabetes that occurs in people over 18 years of age.
Some studies have found that increased water consumption (as opposed to upping the quantity of sodas or fruit juices you consume) leads to better blood glucose control and insulin response.
One 24-week study, for example, showed that overweight adults who replaced diet sodas with water as part of a weight-loss programme experienced a decrease in insulin resistance and lower levels of blood glucose and insulin after fasting.
So drink plenty of water, at least 2 to 4 litres, a day to stop diabetes developing.
Make sure you avoid the sugar-filled sodas and energy drinks. Instead, when you need a pick up or energy booster, go for coffee or tea.
Coffee and tea contain polyphenols, antioxidants that may protect against diabetes. Green tea also contains epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a unique antioxidant that has been shown to reduce the release of blood sugar from the liver and to increase insulin sensitivity.
Several studies have shown that drinking coffee daily reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by anywhere from 8 to 54%. The greatest reduction in risk is seen in those who drink the most.
An analysis of several studies, that included tea as well as coffee, found similar results. This review also showed that the risk of developing diabetes was reduced the most in women (of all sizes) and overweight men.
So it’s plenty of water, tea and coffee for pre-diabetics who wish to avoid developing diabetes.
[11] Take a daily nutritional supplement
Vitamins are vital for health. All vitamins fall into one of two main groups… water-soluble or fat-soluble.
Water-soluble
are all the B vitamins plus vitamin C. These vitamins are not stored in your body and you get rid of excess quantities in your urine. Thus they cannot build up to toxic levels in your body.
Fat-soluble
are vitamins A, D, E, and K. To absorb these vitamins, you need a little fat in your diet. Any excess amounts are stored in your body fat so they could, theoretically, build up to toxic levels. But this is extremely rare.
Minerals are divided into two groups – major minerals and trace minerals.
Major minerals are the minerals you need in amounts of 100 milligrams (mg) or more each day. These minerals are calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sulphur, potassium, sodium, and chloride.
Trace minerals are needed in amounts of less than 100mg each day. Trace minerals include iron, iodine, zinc, fluoride, selenium, copper, chromium, manganese, and molybdenum.
Minerals are used in a variety of processes. For example, your body uses calcium to make bones and teeth, and iron to make the haemoglobin in your red blood cells.
