Losing Weight Is Hard, But It’s Not Any Harder If You Have Type 2 Diabetes

Losing weight is hard, but it’s not any harder if you have type 2 diabetes

A study has found weight loss could reverse type 2 diabetes. The UK clinical trial showed that 46% of people who followed a low-calorie diet, among other measures, for 12 months were able to stop their type 2 diabetes medications.
This confirms a position outlined in a previous paper that people can beat diabetes into remission if they lost about 15 kilograms. Another study showed that prediabetes (a blood sugar level that is high, but lower than necessary for diabetes diagnosis) can be prevented by losing as little as 2kg.
If weight loss isn’t already hard enough, many people think it’s more difficult if you have diabetes. One small study perhaps sowed the seed for this defeatist idea. A dozen overweight diabetic subjects and their overweight non-diabetic spouses were treated together in a behavioural weight-control program. After 20 weeks, the diabetic group lost 7.4kg on average while their non-diabetic spouses lost 13.4kg.
But there’s more to this story than meets the eye. In fact, losing weight with type 2 diabetes is no harder than it is without it.
Where does this idea comes from?
Type 2 diabetes triples the risk of heart attack and stroke, and is the leading cause of blindness, amputations and kidney failure. Treatment with modern drugs improves the outlook, but complications still develop and life expectancy is substantially reduced, especially for younger people. So beating it into remission is the ultimate goal of management.
If weight loss helps reach that goal, people need to know if it’s harder to achieve than without diabetes. From all the information Continue reading

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Many adults with diabetes delay insulin therapy

(Reuters Health) - Three in ten adults with type 2 diabetes who need to start taking insulin to lower their blood sugar don’t begin treatment when their doctors tell them to, a recent study suggests.
On average, these patients delay insulin for about two years, researchers report in Diabetic Medicine.
“This matters to patients because insulin therapy is typically offered to patients with high blood sugar levels,” said senior study author Dr. Alexander Turchin of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“If the patient does not start insulin therapy and does not initiate any other changes to bring their blood sugar levels down, their blood sugar can stay high for years, leading to diabetes complications such as blindness, kidney failure and heart attacks,” Turchin said by email.
Globally, about one in 10 adults have diabetes, according to the World Health Organization. Most have type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity and aging and occurs when the body can’t make or process enough of the hormone insulin.
Medications as well as lifestyle changes such as improved diet and exercise habits can help manage diabetes and keep symptoms in check. When diabetes isn’t well managed, however, dangerously high blood sugar can eventually lead to blindness, amputations, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke.
While some previous research has found diabetics often fail to start insulin when it’s needed, it’s been unclear how much of this is due to doctors failing to prescribe the medication versus patients refusing to take it, Turchin Continue reading

Can Diabetics Drink Coffee? Is it Good or Bad for Diabetic Patient

Coffee has been known as a harmful drink which has been responsible for causing a number of health issues. Doctors have always advised avoiding the drink. However, recent studies have only proved that drinking a moderate amount of coffee may not be too bad for health. It, in fact, gives a number of health benefits. In the article that follows, we will find out, although surprisingly, that drinking coffee may actually reduce the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes in the long run.
What is Diabetes and What Are Its Types?
To understand the effects of coffee on the blood sugar level and diabetes, it is first necessary to understand the very meaning of the disease and how is it caused:
Diabetes is a disease which is caused either due to the lack of proper production or due to the improper use of insulin in the human body. This gives rise to the blood sugar level or the glucose level in the body. There are the following main types of diabetes:
Type 1 Diabetes
It is the condition where the Pancreas are unable to produce enough insulin in the body.
Type 2 Diabetes
It is the condition which occurs when the body is not able to process the level of sugar or glucose present in the blood properly
When we talk about the effect of drinking coffee on the level of blood sugar in the body and consequently its effect on diabetes, we are essentially speaking of type 2 diabetes. The reason being, the effects of caffeine, the main ingredient in the coffee, has been seen more on this type than any other type.
Effect of Coffee on blood sugar level if you are not Diabetic
Let us begin by first und Continue reading

How diet shakes and dropping sodas reversed diabetes

Eric Smith comes from the part of Ohio where fizzy soft drinks are called “pop.” He also called them his beverage of choice — for lunch, dinner and snacks.
So when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in November 2016, Smith knew he was going to have to cut down. In fact, he cut out all sugary soft drinks and switched to water.
He stopped eating fast food, white bread and other junk and, in the space of a few months, he turned around his diabetes and has normal blood sugar now.
On Tuesday, a large study confirmed what Smith and other people like him have found — a strict weight-loss diet can reverse the progression of Type 2 diabetes and bring many people back to normal.
“I was drinking maybe six cans of pop a day if you averaged it out,” said Smith, a 40-year-old bookkeeper.
“Every meal I would have one, maybe two with lunch, two with dinner. If it wasn’t pop it was a sugary drink somewhere.”
And Smith was, like so many Americans, obese. “I was up to 390,” he said.
He joined the Cleveland Clinic's Lifestyle Essentials program, which includes a series of six appointments to help people learn how to improve their habits. By changing his diet and adding in just a little exercise, he’s dropped weight and controlled his blood sugar.
“I am down to 345, 350 right now,” Smith said, and his blood sugar is in the normal, healthy range.
It’s more evidence that weight loss alone can control diabetes, which kills more than 70,000 Americans every year.
Other studies have shown that weight-loss surgery can help reverse diabetes. But that’s an extreme opti Continue reading

Diabetes and obesity linked to number of nearby fast-food outlets, study finds

Diabetes and obesity rates in inner cities can be linked to the number of fast-food outlets near people’s homes, a study has found.
Scientists based their conclusion on a study of 10,000 people in the UK. They found there were twice as many fast-food outlets within 500 metres of homes in non-white and socially deprived neighbourhoods.
The lead researcher, Prof Kamlesh Khunti from the University of Leicester, said: “The results are quite alarming and have major implications for public health interventions to limit the number of fast-food outlets in more deprived areas.”
Writing in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the researchers said that every additional two outlets per neighbourhood led to the expectation of one additional case of diabetes. This was assuming a causal relationship between the two.
Khunti said: “In a multi-ethnic region of the UK, individuals had on average two fast-food outlets within 500 metres of their home.
“This number differed substantially by key demographics, including ethnicity; people of non-white ethnicity had more than twice the number of fast-food outlets in their neighbourhood compared with white Europeans. We found that the number of fast-food outlets in a person’s neighbourhood was associated with an increased risk of screen-detected type 2 diabetes and obesity.
“We found a much higher number of fast-food outlets in more deprived areas where a higher number of black and minority ethnic populations resided. This in turn was associated with higher prevalence of obesity and diabetes.”
Co-author Dr Patrice Carter, also from th Continue reading