Diabetes Management: Being Active

Food is becoming a source of hatred for many people. They think of it as being the enemy. We eat food that tastes good and satisfies us at the moment; then we hate how it makes us look and feel. But it is not the food we should hate. It is the decisions we make regarding food and our attitude towards food that needs a makeover.

Even small changes in your lifestyle can help you better manage Type 2 diabetes. While blood sugar testing is a crucial self-management tool, developing a physically active lifestyle and changing your eating style help control both your blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Regardless of the problems you may be dealing with at the moment, the trick is to do a bit more for your health today than you did yesterday. Maybe it is not a trick, but more a simple piece of advice.

In May of 2018, the journal Hormone and Metabolic Research reported on a study performed at the South Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in Harbin, China, and the First Hospital of Jilin University in Changchun, China. High liver enzymes which indicate liver disease, were linked to insulin resistance, the cause of Type 2 diabetes. A total of 212 participants with Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease were studied. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, as the name describes, is a condition with too much fat stored in the liver, not caused by alcoholism.

It has been found people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk for colorectal carcinoma, or cancer. Diets causing inflammation have been linked to such cancer and a species of bacteria, according to a study reported on in April 2018 in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Scientists at Harvard Medical School in the United States and Huazhong University in China compared the nutrition of the participants in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. The participants kept diaries of the foods they ate over the years. Based on eighteen foods associated with inflammation, researchers scored the participants’ diets according to the empirical dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP). This score tells investigators the amount of inflammation likely to be present.

Stress levels have increased, and like many other risk factors contributing to Type 2 diabetes or heart disease, we are now exposed to many more stressors than previous generations have been. Stress has a way of affecting how we eat. It can seem to take up all the space in our brain; cause us to crave unhealthy foods, and makes it easier for us to eat more than we should

In June of 2018, the Journal of Clinical Medical Research reported on a study showing the reduction in protein levels in the urine of people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes after they stopped smoking. Too much albumin, a kind of protein similar to egg white, escapes the kidneys and goes into the urine in diabetic kidney disease. Scientists at Jinnouchi Hospital and Kumamoto University Hospital in Kumamoto, Japan found lowering the blood pressure, and the heartbeat rate in sufferers helped decrease the amount of albumin in the urine.