Our country has an ever increasing number of people with obesity and diabetes. There is a direct correlation between obesity and type 2 diabetes. More than eighty-five percent of people with diabetes are overweight. The American Diabetes Association estimates twenty-one million people currently have diabetes, and another fifty-four million have pre-diabetes. Diabetes is a deadly disease and more than 150,000 people die each year because of complications related to diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is when the body is not transporting glucose properly. This is due to insulin resistance causing a build up of high blood sugar. Insulin is directly responsible for transporting glucose (sugar) to the cells of our body. If a person is obese, the body is less sensitive to insulin. Fat cells have been proven to resist insulin more than muscle cells. Thus, more glucose will be built up in the blood and less will be transported to the cells and organs to be used for energy.
Insulin resistance is only the beginning as well. Once the body has to produce more and more insulin to work properly, the cells become overworked and gradually fail. The body has to work harder to keep blood sugar levels regulated. This puts added stress on other cells to compensate and leads to even worse complications. Nerve damage and liver damage can occur afterwards.
Type 2 diabetes can be prevented in many cases. In recent studies, doctors found that changing your lifestyle to promote weight loss can delay diabetes development or cure it all together. This has to do with changing your diet and eating more healthy. Activities such as walking and jogging were done in a research study and found that the development of diabetes could be cut as much as forty percent. Working out and watching what you eat can have a huge impact on preventing diabetes in the future. Maintaining a healthy weight is the most preventative step you can take to stop type 2 diabetes from developing.
If an obese person builds muscle content and loses body fat, the insulin will work more effectively. The progression of the disease will be slowed or can be prevented entirely. In addition, by losing weight, cholesterol and blood pressure levels will also benefit. You will be more healthy overall and be less at risk for all diseases associated with being overweight.
There are also medications you can take to help treat insulin resistance from obesity. Metformin is one such medicine that is used to reduce the progression of the disease in obese people. It promotes healthy weight loss and lowers blood glucose fasting levels. There are more medications available but you should talk to your doctor before using them.
The high increase in the number of type 2 diabetes cases is due to the increasing number of obesity and overweight people in the U.S. Being overweight greatly improves your chances of developing type 2 diabetes. A proper diet filled with nutrition and exercise can go a long way in the long term battle against diabetes.
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