How to Prevent Prediabetes?
In preventing prediabetes in your body, you must have a healthy lifestyle. It can help you to prevent prediabetes and its progression to type 2 diabetes even if your family history has already runs diabetes.
Here are some tips to prevent prediabetes:
- Watch your weight. Being overweight or obese significantly increases your risk for prediabetes, so taking off extra weight is very important. Losing 5% to 10% of your body weight may help you prevent or at least delay type 2 diabetes.2 For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, losing 10 to 20 pounds can reduce your risk. Losing weight can be hard, but you can do it. The easiest way to start is by cutting calories and getting more active.
- Be active / Exercise regularly. Working out can help you peel off extra pounds if you need to lose or help you maintain your weight if you're at a healthy weight. When you're active, your body uses glucose. The more active you are, the more glucose your body uses for energy. This keeps the sugar from building up in your blood. Exercise can also improve insulin resistance. Walking is a great way to start.
- Enjoy healthy food choices. It can be hard to make big changes in the way you eat. It's okay to start small, by limiting the amount foods that are low in fat, sugars, and sodium. Choose low or zero-calorie beverages over sweetened drinks. Replace white carbohydrates (i.e. white bread, white rice) with whole grains, brown rice and etc. that are rich in fiber.
- Keep blood pressure and cholesterol under control. When you have prediabetes, you are more likely to get heart disease than someone with normal blood sugar levels. If you have high cholesterol, take an active role in controlling it: Aim to exercise at least 30 minutes most days, eat a diet low in saturated fats and don’t smoke. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends maintaining your blood pressure below 130/80 mmHg to prevent the complications that often accompany diabetes.
- If you smoke, quit. Quitting smoking can help you reduce your risk of getting type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Quitting can also reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke.
Take a simple steps to prevention
The National Diabetes Education Program's "Small Steps, Big Rewards" program shows ways you can make small changes to your lifestyle that can have a big impact on preventing prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
These changes include:
- Setting weight-loss goals.
- Adding exercise to your life.
- Tracking your progress.
For more information, see the National Diabetes Education Program Web site at www.ndep.nih.gov.
Source & References:
Source & References:
- Preventing pre-diabetes from becoming diabetes - Foxnews.com Retrieved last February 26, 2013
- Prediabetes - Prevention - Mayoclinic.com. Retrieved last February 26, 2013
- Prevention - Webmd.com. Retrieved last February 26, 2013
