Lifestyle tips that can keep diabetes away

The International Diabetes Foundation’s (IDF) 10th report released in 2019 projected that by 2045, the number of people living with the disease will rise sharply to over 700 million from 463 million.

As a result, the fatalities triggered directly or indirectly by the condition will rise in tandem to well over 4.2 million a year. The report also indicates that low- and middle-income countries will suffer the greatest burden of diabetes. This is due to improved standards of living driven, in part, by rapid economic development and urbanisation. This has prompted shifts in food practices from traditional to processed foods and increase in the sedentary lifestyle.

This notwithstanding, there are well-known measures that can be taken to substantially defy this projection. While the development of the disease is also attributed to genetic and environmental components, it is lifestyle habits that largely account for new cases.

Lifestyle interventions

Therefore, instilling timely lifestyle interventions can greatly delay the onset of the disease in high-risk groups and prevent it from advancing to severe stages in those people who are already living with the condition. These changes include consuming a healthy diet, maintaining suitable body weight, regular physical activity and shunning tobacco use.

In addition, ramping up diagnostic and screening capacity in low- and middle-income countries is central to timely decision making. Regular blood tests to check the level of blood sugar, also known as glucose, is a key factor in the management of the disease.

Nervous system

The benefits can be twofold; first, the tests inform the need for one to step up prevention if found negative and second, ensures treatment starts in earnest if the tests implicated a confirmation for diabetes. The latter is a critical factor as it enhances early detection, given the consideration that many people do not suspect they suffer from the condition until the onset of complications.

It’s well established that as diabetes progresses, a number of other complications that affect the normal functioning of the cardiovascular, nervous and renal systems, among others, sets in.

This predisposes diabetics to heart, kidney and neural defects, which account for the largest proportion of diabetes-related deaths. Further, it impairs immune response, exposing diabetics to the risk of suffering opportunistic infections with poor outcomes, if not well managed.

That said, part of the disease management strategies should entail improvement in delivery of quality health care services in a multi-pronged approach. This should include promoting diabetes advocacy, stepping up diagnosis and screening tests, steadying supply and access to insulin and other essential drugs, targeting the management of other offshoot chronic conditions and infections that worsen the outcome for diabetics. 

This can only be achieved through aggressive efforts aimed at strengthening primary health systems in countries where prevalence of diabetes is on the uptick.

[email protected]; @KerimaZablon