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Top Five Tips to Avoid Diabetes

One of the most preventable chronic diseases is Type-2 diabetes. The raw numbers are staggering.

Regardless, an explosion of the chronic disease in the past 30 years has turned it into one of the biggest money drains of medical dollars in American households.

Diabetes by the numbers:

More than 25 million Americans have diabetes.
25.8 million: Americans with diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed)
79 million: Americans with pre-diabetes!
$174 billion: Annual cost of treating diabetes
<100 mg/dL: Normal fasting blood glucose level
100 – 125 mg/dL: Pre-diabetes
>125 mg/dL: Indicates diabetes

Doctors and researchers are racing to find new treatments, but everyone agrees that lifestyle changes you make will keep you out of the doctors’ offices and improve your overall health.

So what to do? Here are five sure-fire tips that will reverse diabetes:

1. Calorie Restriction

Semi-extreme solution: Newcastle University in England did a study and revealed that a 600-calorie-a-day diet reversed type 2 diabetes in a small group of patients who had diabetes for less than four years. Seven patients out of 10 were still diabetes-free three months after they stopped the extreme eight-week diet, which consisted of meal-replacement drinks and three daily servings of starchy vegetables. Extreme, but if you can carve out empty calories and eliminate anything but water and tea – and stop with anything bread-like and substitute big lettuce leaves for buns for sandwiches.

2. Bariatric Surgery (Lap Band)

Extreme solution, for the heaviest of people. Roux-en-Y gastric bypass has proven effective at reversing type 2 diabetes: 80 percent of patients undergoing this surgery — which involves creating a pouch in the upper part of the stomach and attaching it farther down the small intestine — experience dramatic remission of their diabetes. These results are seen just days after surgery. The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in particular seems to alter specific hormones that help regulate the body’s response to sugar.

3. Lose 10 Pounds

Moderate solution: The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), a large multicenter research study revealed that overweight people with pre-diabetes can reduce their risk for diabetes by 58 percent if they lose as little as 5% of their body weight.

4. Make Exercise a Daily Commitment

Easy to moderate solution: Give yourself just 30 minutes a day to exert yourself. Power-walking or just run around the block a few times. Stairs in the home for 25 up and down times. Elliptical machine for 30 minutes is ideal to keep joints from aching. Swim, vigorous house work, rake leaves, but just do something daily.

Physical exertion helps muscle cells better use glucose and can lead to weight loss, which is the key to preventing diabetes.

5. Add some Superfoods

Easy solution: Cool Food Swaps: Add some raw or steamed broccoli daily as a side dish; you get a reduction in cholesterol in your blood stream thanks to its magic ingredient: Glucoraphanin, which works by breaking fat down in the body, preventing it from clogging the arteries. It is only found in broccoli in significant amounts.

Chia Seeds: Find them online, they are poppy-seed like and you can make pudding with them, or add to anything. Omega-3 oil is usually thought of as “that healthy stuff in fish”. What if you’re a vegetarian, or a fish hater? Chia is the richest plant-source of this healthy oil. By weight, chia contains more omega 3 than salmon. Omega 3 oil is important in heart and cholesterol health. It’s also recently been targeted as a weight-loss helper.

Quinoa: Rice replacer. Quinoa is an ancient grain, easy to make, tasty, high in protein (8 grams in 1 cup cooked), fiber (5 grams per cup) – (pronounced keen-wa) also has plenty of zinc, vitamin E, and selenium to help control your weight and lower your risk for heart disease and diabetes. Add to soups and veggie meals to add protein.

SignatureMD physicians are at the vanguard of prevention and wellness coaching for all patients. Your health is your first wealth, and SignatureMD personalized medical plans offer you an affordable solution to the medical insurance crisis for peace of mind.

SignatureMD physicians are aware of the growing number of people with diabetes, thats why they also provide pre-diabetes screening for their patients.
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Source(s)

I. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13887909
II. http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/expert.q.a/10/30/bariatic.surgery.diabetes.jampolis/index.html