Diabetes is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. One of the risk factors of diabetes is obesity. As Americans are becoming more obese, more people are being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes every year. Type 2 Diabetes is when your body does not produce enough insulin in order to properly digest your foods. Obesity increases the risk factors for diabetes because it causes your digestive system to work overtime to eliminate glucose from your body.

The best way to lower your risk factors for diabetes is to keep your weight maintained. You should try to exercise and reduce your weight so that you are no overweight or obese. There are those people who are borderline diabetic who can reverse the condition by losing weight.

Other risk factors for diabetes include eating too many carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are processed slowly through the body and are converted to glucose. This has to be eliminated from your body through exercise or else it sticks around on your body as fat cells. By exercising and lowering the intake of carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates, you can lower risk factors for diabetes.

Simple carbohydrates are foods that are high in sugar and have no real nutritional value to your body. In addition to the foods such as cookies, doughnuts, cakes, pastries and candy, you also have to watch your sugar intake with regard to what you drink. Many people end up taking in more carbohydrates than they think because of the sugary drinks that they consume. One way to lower your risk factors for diabetes is to watch what you drink. Cutting out soft drinks as well as sugary drinks, even those so-called healthy drinks, can not only help you maintain a healthier weight but also give your digestive system some help as it does not have to struggle so hard to process these sweet drinks.

Alcohol is also very high in sugar content. Lowering diabetes risk factors also means watching your alcohol intake. Alcoholic drinks are usually very high in sugar and have little nutritional value. Dry red wine has the lowest sugar values and the highest nutritional value when it comes to alcoholic drinks. Watching what you drink is just as crucial to watching what you eat with regard to diabetes risk factors.

In some cases, people get diabetes even if they are not overweight and have a relatively healthy diet. There is some indication that diabetes is also an inherited condition. Those who have a first degree relative with this disease should be aware of their blood glucose levels and get themselves tested periodically for diabetes. Good sugar levels for someone who does not have diabetes is around 100. Those who have high blood glucose levels already have diabetes or are on their way to getting diabetes. You can lower your diabetes risk factors if the disease runs in your family by watching what you eat and drink and also seeing the doctor on a regular basis to get a blood glucose reading.

Pregnant women sometimes come down with gestational diabetes. In such cases, the disease will subside after the baby is born. Pregnant women can lower their risk factors for getting gestational diabetes by maintaining a healthy weight during their pregnancies. In some cases, the gestational diabetes does not go away and becomes Type 2 Diabetes.

Type 1 Diabetes is found in childhood and is a condition that some children are born with. The risk factors for this disease are still unknown although often this disease runs in the family. Those with Type 1 Diabetes produce no insulin and need to be on insulin medication for the rest of their lives.

Diabetes takes its toll on the kidneys as well as the rest of the digestive system. It causes the kidneys to work overtime in eliminating waste from the system. Many of those who have diabetes end up having kidney failure due to the disease.

While some of the risk factors of diabetes, such as family history, cannot be helped, you can cut your risk of getting this disease due to obesity by watching what you eat, exercising and also avoiding foods and drinks that are high in sugars.

OTHER HEALTH & WELLNESS ARTICLES

Simple Ways to Lower Your Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is a typical sign of the ills of the lifestyle you have adopted till now. The [...]

Achieving Amazing Health After 40
Feel like you’re climbing over the hill and so is your body? Not to fret, there are tons of thin [...]

Cures for the Common Cold
You have the common cold. You are miserable. Your nose is runny and you can’t stop sneezing. [...]

Sharp Memory Enhancers
7% of the worlds population is currently of the age of 65. That is 500 million people! Scientists [...]