Losing Excess Weight Can Lower
Your Risk for Diabetes

by Richard Hays, M.D.

Diabetes is an epidemic that is spreading rapidly throughout the world. Almost one in 10 Americans will develop this disease, and most will have it for as many as 10 years before they are diagnosed.

During this time, their bodies will develop insulin resistance, which will make it harder for their bodies to make enough insulin to control their blood sugar. Eventually, the ability to make sufficient insulin will wear out.

Why Me?

In medicine, diabetes has been considered two similar diseases in one. Type 1 diabetes has traditionally affected children and was previously known as juvenile onset diabetes. It strikes suddenly, and those affected need insulin to survive because their bodies stop producing this vital hormone.

Type 2 diabetes was known as adult onset diabetes and most often affected people in their 50s and beyond. These people typically were treated with pills to help moderate the disease, and only a few who had diabetes for several decades needed insulin injections to control it.

Those trends have changed. Physicians are now diagnosing type 2 diabetes with great regularity in teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s. Most people who have diabetes early in their teen years or adulthood will have this disease long enough to be at higher risk for heart disease, strokes, kidney failure and vision loss.

"Endometriosis can be devastating," says Dr. Day. "Some women have such severe symptoms that it affects their ability to work, sleep and perform their normal daily activities. It’s also a major cause of infertility."

Treatment Can Make a Difference

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recently changed its diabetes diagnosis guidelines. If a fasting plasma glucose test, which measures blood sugar after a fast, gives a result of 126 or above, that person has diabetes. If an oral glucose tolerance test is given -- in which the person fasts and then drinks a glucose-rich beverage two hours before the test -- a score of 200 or above indicates diabetes. The ADA lowered the bar to allow doctors to diagnose people earlier, enable earlier treatment and hopefully delay the effects of this disease.

The biggest reason more people are crossing this line is that more people are overweight. The risk for diabetes is directly tied to a person’s weight, and between 80 and 90 percent of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight. Fat cells play a major role in causing the insulin resistance that marks the early stages of diabetes. Losing 5 or 10 percent of a person’s body weight can reverse the early effects of diabetes for years.

Diet and exercise are the cornerstones of treatment for everyone with type 2 diabetes. Sadly, weight gain is a side effect of most of the traditional diabetes medicines. Newer classes of drugs are becoming available that focus on our hormones, which control blood sugar and encourage weight loss.

Early Weight Control Is Important

While these drugs are an exciting means of treating the early stages of diabetes, they remind us of the impact that early weight control would have had years earlier. By encouraging our children to maintain ideal body weight through regular exercise and well-balanced diets, we can save them from the risk of years of dealing with many diseases.

Family physicians are paying greater attention to screening overweight children and children with family histories of diabetes for the early signs of the disease.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers the "Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005." These guidelines emphasize the importance of reducing calorie consumption and increasing physical activity and can be found at www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines.

We encourage patients at risk for diabetes to be screened for the disease and get an early jump on treatment if diet fails to prevent it. For people who develop diabetes, routine healthcare and careful monitoring and control of blood sugar can delay many of the complications associated with the disease and help people live long and healthy lives.

Richard Hays, MD, received his education at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University of Florida College of Medicine and the Duke University Family Practice Residency in North Carolina. He has treated patients of all ages since 1986. He currently lectures to physicians across the country on the care of patients with diabetes. For an appointment with Dr. Hays, please call 561-433-9300.

Wellington Regional Medical Center, 10101 Forest Hill Blvd. Wellington, FL 33414 (561) 798-9880