By Lifestyle Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes
Lifestyle factors are the main reason why diabetes rates are getting higher. Modern western lifestyles happen to lend themselves toward health problems that lead to type 2 diabetes, and 17.7 million Americans already have the disease.
Dietary Factors
Dietary factors are strongly linked to type 2 diabetes. Certain types of dietary fats have been shown to increase your risk of developing reduced insulin sensitivity. A diet, high in saturated fats could be detrimental, and not just because fat is high in calories and can contribute to overconsumption and weight gain. Certain fatty acid biomarkers in the body, which reflect a diet, high in saturated and trans fats, have been found to predict diabetes — people with these biomarkers later developed the disease.
Frequent consumption of sugary beverages may also increase your diabetes risk. This is partly because it promotes weight gain and obesity. Soda and other beverages that are high in sugar — including fruit juices that are generally marketed as healthy — contain a lot of sugar, and just two sodas puts you over the World Health Organization’s recommendations for daily sugar intake. They’re also relatively high in calories, which adds up if you drink a lot of it. Despite being high-calorie, it’s not filling. However, when data from medical research is adjusted to compensate for confounding factors like obesity, it appears that high sugar consumption still has an independent effect on diabetes risk.
You can reduce your risk of diabetes by reducing your consumption of saturated fats, trans fats, and refined sugar. Limiting the amount of soda you drink, and swapping saturated fats for unsaturated fats, can make a big difference in your risk level. Plus, you’ll probably lose weight as a side effect of the change in your diet.
Obesity
There’s no way around it: obesity is the number one risk factor for diabetes. If you’re more than 20 pounds overweight, losing weight could greatly reduce your chances of developing type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a contributing factor in 55% of type 2 diabetes cases. Excess adipose tissue on your body releases hormones, cytokines, and other chemical signals that affect other tissues. Inflammatory cytokines can affect cellular pathways that decrease your insulin resistance, as well as affecting gene expression that promotes diabetes.
You Can Start Decreasing Your Diabetes Risk Today
Many nurses are at risk of eventually developing type 2 diabetes. Diabetes can lead to a higher risk of strokes, heart attacks, and kidney failure. Being more active, losing weight if you need to, and adjusting your diet can go a long way toward minimizing your diabetes risk, even if you’re probably genetically predisposed toward it.
