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Action Steps To Prevent Diabetes Mellitus Type 2
According to the World Book Encyclopedia, the average adult human body contains approximately 96,500 kilometers (60,000 miles) of blood vessels. This means that if you were to attach all of your blood vessels together end to end, they could wrap around the Earth almost two and a half times.
Some of your blood vessels are about as thick as a magic marker, while others are as thin as a strand of hair. All of your blood vessels are essential to your health because they provide the transportation network that allows your blood to carry nutrients and oxygen to each of your cells. Your network of blood vessels also allows your blood to remove waste products from all of your cells.
Diabetes mellitus type 2 (referred to as diabetes throughout the rest of this article) has the potential to be a devastating disease because it slowly clogs up your network of blood vessels, destroying the transportation system that your blood relies entirely upon to nourish and cleanse your cells. Imagine injecting sugar-rich honey or jam into your blood vessels and you have a good idea of why a high blood sugar level is dangerous to your health.
Left unchecked, diabetes can result in complete blockages in your circulatory system, paving the way to every health challenge that we know of, the most common ones being heart disease, neurological disease, vision loss, and sexual dysfunction.
How You Can Develop Diabetes
Whenever you eat sugar or foods that break down into sugar, your blood sugar level rises. Your body senses this rise and makes your pancreas release a hormone called insulin into your blood. Insulin circulates throughout your network of blood vessels along with sugar, and acts as key, opening channels that line your cells, which allows sugar to exit your bloodstream and enter your cells. The net effects of optimal insulin release and function are:
- Lowering of your blood sugar level.
- Making sugar available for energy production or storage by your cells.
You can develop diabetes if you regularly eat more sugar and refined carbohydrates than your body can properly use. With repeated intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates, your body is forced to produce and release insulin so frequently that one or both of the following conditions may arise:
- Your pancreas may not be able to produce enough insulin to effectively deal with your sugar and refined carbohydrate intake.
- Your cells may become resistant to the effects of insulin.
One or both of these conditions will eventually lead to a high blood sugar level, which over the long term, will dramatically increase your risk of developing blockages in your network of blood vessels.
How to Reduce Your Risk of Developing Diabetes
What follows are the most important steps that you can begin taking today to dramatically reduce your risk of developing diabetes.
- Regularly engage in some form of exercise that builds and/or maintains your muscle mass. Muscle tissue has significant capacity to store excess blood sugar in the form of glycogen. Simply put, the more muscle you have, the more capacity you have to "soak up" excess blood sugar and maintain a healthy blood sugar level. This is one of the biggest benefits to doing some resistance training on a regular basis.
- Be active! The more you move your body throughout the day, the more sugar your cells need to burn up to produce energy.
- Reduce or eliminate your intake of the following most common, sugar-rich foods in today's grocery stores:
- Pop (soda)
- Doughnuts
- Pastries
- Conventional store-bought cookies, cakes, and muffins
- Conventional chocolate/candy bars
- Many boxed breakfast cereals
- Eat magnesium-rich foods on a regular basis. Studies conducted by researchers from Harvard University and published in the January 2004 issue of the journal Diabetes Care indicate that consistent intake of magnesium-rich foods can significantly lower your risk of developing diabetes. Healthy magnesium-rich foods include:
- Brown rice
- Raw almonds
- Spinach
- Swiss chard
- Lima beans
- Avocado
- Raw peanuts
- Raw hazelnuts
- Okra
- Black-eyed peas
- Consider consuming prickly pear cactus, called nopal in Mexico. Nopal is a natural plant that is grown throughout Mexico and the southwestern United States, and has been shown through several studies to be effective at promoting optimal blood sugar levels.
If you follow the measures described above, you can confidently expect to reduce your risk of developing diabetes and improve your overall health.
If you need some guidance on how to choose healthy carbohydrates, view the following article: Making Sense of Carbohydrates
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Comments
Diabetes
Thank you for the article on preventing diabetes. Many members of my family have this disease and many have passed on because of it. I first learned about it nearly 50 years ago when my grandmother was diagnosed. In all of those years, this is the best article that I have read. I recently lost a dear Uncle, due to diabetes, he had many of the problems that you pointed out. I admire your simple, to the point, no-fluff description. Thank you
again. Sue Lunsford
More recent information ........
Dr. Kim's comments on diabetes are excellent. There is, however, more to the diabetes story than just simply avoiding simple and processed sugars. The most recent research shows that saturated fat in the diet is paramount to developing diabetes and/or healing from it. In Type II diabetes there is plenty of insulin released into the system in response to sugar. The ultimate problem is that this sugar remains in the blood stream rather than move into the cells where it is needed and can be burned off. The role of insulin is to unlock the lock of the cell to allow the sugar in. The research shows that saturated fat accumulated and built up in the cell is akin to goop blocking the lock to the cell thus not allowing the key - the insulin - to do its job by unlocking the lock. If you think of gum in a lock, that is exactly what is going on intracellulary. Many Type II diabetics are now reversing their disease by stopping eating saturated fat and allowing the locks to clean themselves out. If you want to reverse your diabetes not only do you have to stop eating refined sugars (pop, white foods, refined flours, candy, baked goods, cookies, crackers, etc.) but you also have to stop eating saturated fats. The highest concentration of saturated fat in the diet is cheese, butter, fat marbled meats, sausages, hot dogs, hamburgers,etc. If you want to stop taking diabetes medications and reverse your disease read: Reversing Diabetes by Neal Barnard, M.D.
Diabetes and heart disease and many cancers are diseases of lifestyle and diet - and are completely reversable. If you are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired you can change your life - it is up to you.Other readings to help you are: Reversing Diabetes by Gary Null, Ph.D., The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. I am a successful product of changing my life. I reversed my prediabetes, high cholesterol, gout, and lost 35 pounds. You do not have to be sick. Good luck - but in this case the luck is totally yours to control.
Gratitude
Dr Ben Kim, beautifully explained and very helpful articles on improving blood circulation with accupressure, prevention of varicose vein formation & control of diabetes mellitus.
Better than any doc I've consulted thus far.
Lyle