Live Well -June 2008

Prevention is the best medicine

What if you could look into a crystal ball to see what your health will be like in the future? It could be disheartening if you saw yourself facing a health problem that was beyond your control. But what if discovering this fact now could help you avoid the problem in the future?

Health experts have discovered something nearly as good as a crystal ball when it comes to the epidemic disease known as type 2 diabetes. Doctors can detect a condition they are calling “prediabetes.” People with this condition have slightly elevated blood sugar levels, but they are not yet diabetic. The key word, of course, is “yet.” The estimated 40 million Americans who are prediabetic today have an extremely high chance of developing full-blown diabetes within 10 years. And that increases the risk for other serious complications, such as heart disease, kidney disease, and blindness.

Doctors have known for years that type 2 diabetes develops gradually, often due to weight gain with age. They did not know whether this process could be interrupted once it got started. But they’ve recently discovered some very good news: With a healthy diet and regular exercise, it can be.
 
A major study has found that lifestyle changes, and in some cases medications as well, can slow down the dangerous march towards diabetes. These changes may even reverse the process and, for some people, prevent diabetes altogether. The Diabetes Prevention Program study followed 3,200 people who had the elevated blood sugar levels that signal prediabetes. Those who lost weight with a low-fat diet and exercise five days a week were 58 percent less likely to end up developing diabetes. Two other groups of study participants who used medications also reduced their risk, but only by 31 percent or less.
 
Experts are starting to recommend that people age 45 or older, particularly those who are overweight, be screened for prediabetes. Other high-risk groups such as blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and people with a family history of diabetes should consider being tested even earlier than age 45. Anyone with high blood pressure or high cholesterol should ask his or her doctors about screening too.
 
If you have prediabetes—and even if you don’t—the path is clear. Eating right, exercising regularly, and losing weight are the best ways to improve what we see in that crystal ball.

This e-mail is brought to you by Live Well, a community wellness initiative of Prattville Baptist Hospital. For information, visit www.baptistfirst.org/livewell.htm or call 2-1-1.