Lifestyle Changes to Treat Diabetes

High blood pressure, or hypertension, goes hand in hand with diabetes and obesity, affecting about 75 percent of people with type 2 diabetes. The combination of the two increases your risk of developing eye, kidney, and heart disease and stroke. If you throw in abnormal cholesterol levels, which will be discussed later in this chapter,

Several types of fats circulate in the blood and are commonly measured by doctors: total cholesterol, LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and triglycerides. In people with diabetes, total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol may be high. How- ever, the most characteristic lipid changes in diabetes are increased triglyceride levels (triglycerides are another circulating fat in

If you have type 2 diabetes, it should come as no surprise that lifestyle has a major impact on your diabetes — especially your blood-sugar control—and that lifestyle changes can have a beneficial effect.

Unlike Super man, who is able to reverse life events by flying really fast, we cannot live life backward. Therefore, if you have already developed type 2 diabetes, you may wonder whether the lifestyle changes that could have prevented diabetes will gain you anything. The answer is yes: the same lifestyle changes that might have

These are the nutrition lifestyle priorities for achieving blood- glucose levels as close to normal as possible and an HbA1c below 7 percent for people treated with insulin (either type 1 or type 2 diabetes):