The Croft Health and Fitness

It may be common knowledge that losing weight helps to reduce the risk of diabetes, but recent research appears to put that beyond any doubt.

Recent research appears to prove that shedding weight is the most important factor in reducing diabetes risk for elevated-risk, severely obese individuals.

In short, Weight Loss helps lower the risk of becoming a sufferer of Diabetes mellitus

Those participating in the intensive lifestyle intervention part of the Diabetes mellitus Prevention Scheme, the aim of which was eliminating fat with the target of decreasing weight by 7%, decreased their risk of developing diabetes by 58 percent a period of 36 months, stated Dr. Richard F. Hamman at the scheme’s control center at George Washington Uninversity, situated in Rockville, Maryland, USA..

On the first stages of the program all members of the study group were technically obese and had reduced ability to adequately process glucose, which left them with a elevated chance of becoming a sufferer of diabetes mellitus.

Another target of the intervention was to get those participating to do a small amount of exercise for a duration of at least 2.5 hours each week, the diabetes specialists report in their article detailed in the September 2006 issue of Diabetes Care Publication.

Doctor Hamman and his researchers were looking for factors that were the most helpful in reducing the risk of diabetes, losing weight, elevated physical exercise or lowered fat intake. Participants reduced their fat to less than 25 percent of their total calories injested, and diminished the total calorie consumption if they did not lose enough weight by just lowering the fat.

Shedding weight was the most important factor in reducing risk of diabetes mellitus, whilst lowering the fat in the diet and increasing exercise helped those involved reduce weight, and physical exercise helped them keep the weight off, the diabetes experts stated.

Another somewhat alarming report seems to suggest that sleep deprivation and diabetes may be connected.

It seems that a busy life style that causes you to lose sleep may also have you heading towards diabetes mellitus.

But don’t be tempted to have too many ‘lie ins’, because excessive sleep could lead to just the same end result.

This is the somewhat unusual outcome of a recent study that suggests too little or too much sleep may cause the blood sugar illness, at least for oldtimers.

“This is one additional piece of information bolstering the common recommendation for sleeping seven to eight hours a night,” reported study co-producer Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, of Boston University.

Dr.Gottlieb and his colleagues studied detailed stats covering the health of nearly 1500 members of a previous research that covered the cardiovascular effects of sleep disorders that also affected breathing. those participating were middle aged to elderly.

The goal of the doctors was to see if they could find a factor that connected sleep issuesand impaired ability to metabolize blood sugar, a symptom of diabetes. They state their findings in this week’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Compared with the participants who slept seven to eight hours, the participants who had less than 5 hours sleep were 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes. The rate of diabetes was somewhat lower for those who achieved 6 hours sleep.

The diabetes rate was also higher for the participants who slept for longer than 9 hours.

Is there a link between taking beta blockers and developing diabetes?
It seems that there may be.

Patients prescribed beta-blockers to control blood pressure have a 50 percent increased probability of becoming a sufferer of diabetes compared to being on newer medication, diabetes experts have discovered.

In a major break through, a recent study illustrates the risks of using the traditional treatments which have fallen out of favor for use on raised blood pressure.

Diabetes sufferers using beta-blockers and diuretics  (the standard prescribed drug for over 30 years) are at far higher risk of diabetes.

It is not just that they are  less effective than more modern treatments, however they advance and, in a few circumstances, bring about the ailment in sufferers from high blood pressure who already are at elevated probability.

As a result of this, many people taking the regular medications are contracting diabetes avoidably each year as a result.

Until this year, around two million patients were taking beta-blocker type of medications.

However newer guidelines to doctors says more modern ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers should be the first treatment of choice for the growing numbers of Britons given drugs for high blood pressure.

This modified opinion came after detailed analysis which found the older drugs were only 50% as effectual at stopping strokes and coronary failures.

Background Information on Diabetes:

Diabetes is a affliction in which your body does not produce or make correct use of insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is vital to convert sugar into energy vital for daily life. What causes diabetes are still not known, although both genetic and environment like excess weight and absence of exercise appear to be relevant factors.

Symptoms of Diabetes:

* The first symptom of diabetes might be terrible thirst (not connected with exercise, hot weather, or short-term illness)
* Extreme hunger; (you know that you have eaten sufficiently, but you still feel hungry)
* Needing to urinate often, (often noticed because you need to wake repeatedly in the nighttime)
* Feeling tired and lacking energy (sometimes enough to make you fall asleep unexpectedly after dining). This is one of the most frequent symptoms of diabetes).
* Unexpected and unusual weight loss (any surprise reduction in weight tells you to make an appointment with your doctor)

Diabetes and Alzheimers may be connected  - recent research suggests that there may be direct connection between how well blood sugar levels are controlled and the onset of Alzheimers.

For almost half of her life, ever since her last pregnancy 40 years ago, Christine Miller has been a sufferer of Type-two diabetes. Because she was not insulin-dependent, Miller was able to tackle her ailment with pills.

However just over 2 years ago, at nearly 80 years of age, Miller developed another problem — mental confusion. Her family took her to the medical center where she discovered to have The neurodegenerative disease, knoen as ‘alzheimers’.

Was there a link between Miller’s four decades of diabetes mellitus and her alzheimers?

Until relatively recently, medical experts might have disdained such a link as just coincidence.

More recently, it is one of the most important areas of Research on alzheimers. It is also becoming an accepted view among some Alzheimer’s researchers Keep your blood sugar and insulin under control and you can reduce your probability of developing alzheimers disease.

The link has been appearing more and more, both in the study of epidemics and clinical trials that use diabetes medication to treat suferrers from dementia.

But the exact reason that elevated sugar or poorly controlled insulin can cause brain cell death still isn’t entirely clear.

Currently, most of the effort in Research on alzheimers is on beta-amyloid, the protein that rises in the brains of suferrers from the affliction.

If you have someone in your family who is diabetic, and injecting insulin, you need to be aware of how to deal with a diabetic crisis should it arise.

Here are a few guidelines adn bit of background information on diabetes.

Food is your body’s fuel to provide enough energy to command a busy lifestyle. Healthy bodies create insulin to convert sugar into energy. Unfortunately, for diabetics, the body does not create satisfactory insulin, and glucose builds up instead of becoming energy.

Folk with diabetes have to be careful with carbohydrate intake and exercise and may need to take insulin at regular intervals to control their affliction.

Occasionally a diabetic person can suffer a medical crisis due to a surfit of insulin. This dangerous event takes place when the blood sugar level has fallen to dangerous low levels. This condition gets rapidly worse and is usually caused by administering too much insulin, not eating enough or doing more exercise than usual.

Symptoms of insulin shock

* The heart rate and breathing are shallow and rapid.
* Skin is sweaty, pale in color and the temperature is low.
* The sufferer is irrational, ill-tempered or very confrontational.
* The diabetic might seem drunk, palpitate or have trouble with speech.

Emergency medical treatment for insulin shock
Awareness of how to react in a diabetic crisis might save a life.

* Comfort the patient and ask someone to call for an ambulance.
* Place an unconscious casualty in the recovery position and monitor
pulse and breathing.
* If a conscious casualty can tell you what they need, assist them to
find and take their medication.
* If the person is too confused to understand what is needed, give them something sweet to eat or drink - a drink rich in glucose may help.

We hope you find that useful, but also hope that you never need to deal with it ‘for real’.