Prevention is the cure

I am very glad to see that everyone who has been keeping up with my blog is satisfied and learning new things every time they check my posts. I am also glad to see that it has all been positive so far. This next article I will be using as a reference is from Self check. The title of this article is “How You Can Help Prevent Diabetes.” This is a very credible page because it is backed by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive & Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Health, and Harvard School of Public Health. This article is more focusing on how to help educate people on the symptoms and risk factors, but however also still touches base on prevention methods.

One of the most important parts to prevention is finding the disease at the start. There are plenty of obvious symptoms that come along with diabetes. Some of those symptoms consist of someone always being tired; going to the bathroom a lot, sudden weight loss, and a major one is wounds that won’t heal. However even with the major weight loss other symptoms are always being hungry and thirsty, blurry vision, numbing in the hand and feet, and lastly sexual issues. Over one in twelve Americans suffer from these kinds of symptoms, and that means there are over twenty five million people that are affected by this.

There are many risk factors that can lead to diabetes, but this article focused on the six risk factors that are most well-known. The first risk factor is being overweight, and the reason that this is first is because there is a direct correlation between fatty tissue and insulin resistance. The next one is belly fat, and if you carry fat in your stomach area more instead of on your thighs, or hips the risk for diabetes is increased. This next one kind of coincides with the first two, and it is Inactivity. This will cause weight gain, which as stated before leads to diabetes. Diabetes can also be something that is hereditary, so a big risk factor is having family history of people with diabetes. People of certain races also have a higher risk of getting diabetes, and those races are Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Asian-Americans. The last major risk factor is age. As you age, especially after the age of 45 the risk of diabetes increases. However now that the population is growing in the percent of people being obese, people younger and younger are being diagnosed with diabetes.

There is a way to calculate your risk of getting diabetes. Some of the questions that the diabetes calculator asks you is your sex, age, height, weight, disease history, and also questions about the kind of foods you are eating. The other questions that are asked are focused around the six big risk factors that were stated earlier. As I said before, this article touched on the topic of preventing, and controlling your diabetes. The same kinds of suggestions were given, like to get more execersise, no smoking, and maintaining a well-balanced diet.

How to take control of your diabetes

Thank you to everyone that left a comment, it was really nice to see that everyone has enjoyed reading about how to prevent diabetes. This next blog will be about if you have diabetes, and need to take back control of your life instead of letting diabetes control your life. The website I have gotten these tips from is WebMD. WebMD is an American corporation known primarily as an online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health and well-being. This website provides valuable health information, tools for managing your health, and support to those who seek information. You can trust that the content you are reading is very credible.

This article has a ton of very helpful tips that can help someone start taking control over their diabetes. All of these tips have goals that are not outrageous, and very obtainable. The first two tips deal with diet. Even with diabetes you are still able to eat the foods you like, even though most people think you have to stick to a strict diet. The only thing to keep in mind about what you pick out to eat is that you need to know how your choices affect your blood sugar. A good way to learn how much which food affects u most is by learning how to count carbs, and read food labels. Also they need to make sure they are eating balanced meals. A good way of making sure you are eating a balanced meal is by splitting it into three categories. The three categories would consist of vegetables, meats and other proteins, and starchy vegetables and whole grains.

Some more good tips involve planning, and keeping track of blood pressure. What a person should be planning for if they have diabetes is for a sick day. The reason for that is because the common illnesses like colds, flu, and diarrhea can raise your blood sugar. Also having diabetes makes it harder to fight off infections. Something good to have on sick days is making sure you have snacks that are easy on the stomach but still give you enough and carbohydrates. Also keeping track of your blood pressure is very important. The reason for that is because it will be able to show if the medication is doing its job. Another reason it is good to keep track is because you can write down goals, and also feelings along with the readings of your blood sugar. This will help someone who is struggling mentally with diabetes.

After discussing all of that, the last tips start to focus on the amount of physical activity, and what kind of physical activity should be done.  The best way to exercise is not all just at one time. A better way of getting plenty of physical activity is by spreading it out throughout the day.  Taking three ten minute walks is just as good as walking for a straight thirty minutes. This will help regulate blood pressure throughout the whole day a lot better. Also a different type of exercise is doing strength workouts. Strength workouts involve equipment like using weights or resistance bands. This will improve how the body uses insulin and sugar.

Helpful Steps of Prevention

The first reference I looked at is the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit medical practice, and is also a medical research group. They work out of Rochester Minnesota. They also have campuses all throughout the United States, there in Arizona, and Florida also. The clinic in Minnesota has been recognized by U.S Newsletter as one of the best hospitals in the nation in 2015. Their main focus is giving everyone quality care, and they are also very involved in the communities that they are located in.

This article in specific focuses on five steps that a person can take to help prevent, and control diabetes.  The specific focus is on type 2 diabetes. None of the steps are anything that is outrageous, or intangible. The steps involve simple tasks like moving around more, eating a healthier diet, and things to talk to your doctor about. When it comes to the physical activities it isn’t asking someone to be able to run a mile, or to do pull ups. It is simply asking someone to just move around more than they would on a daily basis. Also with the diet part it isn’t saying that someone has to stick to a strict diet, all it asks is for that person to eat things with fiber in them.

The first step it says is to get more physical activity, and the reason for this is because there are a lot of benefits that come along with it. The most obvious benefit of physical activity is weight loss, but along with that comes lowering your blood sugar, and it also boosts your body’s sensitivity to the intake of insulin. Both aerobic exercise and resistance training will give you these benefits. The second and third step involves diet. They suggest that when trying to prevent diabetes eating a lot of fiber, and whole grains are very beneficial. With eating a lot of fiber it improves your body’s blood sugar control. This also aids in weight loss too. Eating whole grains also aid in maintaining a healthy blood sugar level.

The fourth step in this process involves trying to get rid of more unnecessary weight. This will be a little easier because you will already be in the habit of being more physically active, and also eating healthier. A study was done which resulted in people with seven percent body weight had a sixty percent less of  a chance of developing diabetes. The last step is all about not going, following fad diets. The fad diets are the ones that you see in magazines and the ones the celebrities all promote. The article says just to stick to eating healthy stuff like vegetables, and also the recommended daily amounts of all nutrients.

Introduction

Hello class my name is Lucas Giron, and I am covering the topic of diabetes prevention. I am in my junior year, and the reason that I picked diabetes prevention is because it has been very prevalent in my family. Also it is something that affects a lot of people in the United States, and I think people should start to learn how to prevent it so they can live healthier lives, and also help other people live healthier lifestyles.