Diabetes Can Be Prevented

By now the mantra has become common: Eat less. Exercise more. Prevent diabetes.
Doctors have told us that a change in lifestyle can either prevent or reverse the effects of type 2 diabetes. I decided to take a look back at seminal literature on this subject.
The Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study was conducted to determine whether a program promoting lifestyle change could prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes in subjects with "impaired glucose tolerance," evident in abnormal blood sugar levels.They found that it can.
"Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by changes in the lifestyles of high-risk subjects" was the conclusion of the authors of a 2001 article in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus by changes in lifestyle among subjects with impaired glucose tolerance."
The researchers, led by Jaakko Tuomilehto, designed the study on the assumption that there would be a 35 percent drop in the incidences of diabetes among the group studied over the six-year period. The researchers studied 522 randomly chosen middle-aged, overweight persons (172 men and 350 women) with impaired glucose tolerance. Overweight persons with a body-mass index of 25 or higher who were 40 to 65 years old and had impaired glucose tolerance were eligible for the study.
Some participants received personal counseling aimed at helping the person lose weight, reduce the amount of fat consumed and increasing his or her levels of fiber and physical activity. They were tested for diabetes annually.During the trial, the risk of diabetes was reduced by 58 percent among the group of people receiving the personal counseling. The reduction in the incidence of diabetes was directly associated with the change in lifestyle.
Impaired glucose tolerance is an intermediate category between a person having normal blood sugar levels and being a diabetic.The participants who received the intervention, in the form of the personal counseling, exercised more and ate more fiber. More people from that group also lost weight than those who did not receive the counseling.
The cumulative incidence of diabetes was also lower in the intervention group than in the control group. Diabetes was diagnosed in a total of 86 subjects. The average proportion of subjects in whom impaired glucose tolerance progressed to diabetes was 3 percent per year in the intervention group and 6 percent per year in the control group.