How to Prevent Diabetes

People have varying levels for developing diabetes. It is a known fact that more people are predisposed to a certain disease either through a factor which is something totally preventable or something that is inherent such as genetics. This article looks at the different risk factors for developing diabetes and what they mean.

One’s risk for developing diabetes is dependent on where one resides in. This is because the environment that one lives in is essentially part of your family’s genetic makeup. That means that if you are a person who is living in the United States and is exposed to the same external, social and factors and agricultural environment, one will eventually take in the same amount of risk for developing such a disease.

For the dreaded disease of diabetes, it is estimated that if you live in the United States, your lifetime risk of developing this particular disease escalates to 39 percent for females and 33 percent for the male population. This is a staggering number because it means that one out of every 3 people in the United States will develop the disease just because they are geographically located in this part of the world. It even rises for the female population.

Another finding by researchers is that if you have been diagnosed as a diabetic before the age of 40, your average life expectancy if you are a woman is reduced by 19 years and for men, the average life expectancy is reduced by a total of 12 years.

If you are a person who has a close relative who has type 2 diabetes, you are automatically proclaimed to have a higher risk of contracting the disease. This is the factor of genetics. One is predisposed to have diabetes according to genetics.

Another important factor is obesity. It is the most significant risk factor. This is because if a person is obese, this fundamentally transforms his body to the point that it will eventually resist insulin. There have been case studies that have shown that if an obese person loses enough weight to reverse it, it will greatly benefit them as this will effectively make the body more well-disposed to insulin.

Birth weight is also relevant to developing diabetes in the latter stages of one’s life. That is because there is a direct relationship between weight and the development of diabetes. However, it is the opposite of what you would reasonably think. The fact is that the lower the birth weight of the child, the higher is its risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

For those people who have now become diabetics, this drastically sheds new light to their either once-ignored health condition or it becomes a death knell signaling their end. For them, it is not so much an omen of demise but more of the beginning of an end. The end of sugary diets, the end of carbohydrates-laden feasts and buffet meals. It is also a beginning in and of itself. This means that the diabetic should either begin to eat right or begin looking for a good life insurance plan.