Early Lifestyle Intervention Key to Diabetes Prevention and Metabolic Memory

This year’s annual diabetes conference brought me to San Francisco.  I’ve attended it for the last 10 years, rotating one year in San Francisco and next New York.  Good thing it was in San Francisco since NY was blanketed with snow.

Previous conference years have provided cutting edge research on new therapies and drugs for diabetes.  Research is changing faster than ever which is why I attend.  This year’s theme came as a surprise.

EARLY LIFESTYLE INTERVENTION is the key to metabolic memory!  What exactly does that mean?

Many of us wait until the last possible moment when the doctor states those 3 dreaded words:  “you have diabetes.”  But why wait?  What’s the point of working too much, exercising too little or putting your health on the back burner?  I hear this sentence every day:  “I know I should exercise and work on my food but something always gets in the way.”

Fortunately or not our health does not go on vacation.  The studies clearly show lifestyle is the MOST effective treatment for the prevention of type 2 or adult onset diabetes.

When you eat “clean” or in an anti-inflammatory way and exercise on a regular basis the body builds up metabolic memories.  The great news is that these memories actually get reserved for a rainy day.  A recent diabetes study showed that good control of blood sugars through healthy lifestyle can cut the risk of heart disease in half.  Sounds pretty good to me!

Metabolic memory keeps the healthy and unhealthy behaviors in its memory bank- like credits and debits.  If your body has early healthy metabolic memories/credits it actually prevents and helps your body in the future – even if you have unhealthy behaviors/debits later on.  

Healthy Lifestyle behaviors now prevent later diabetes complications of the heart, kidney, and eyes.

Why mess with your body’s memory?  Why not start developing great health memories this moment?

The resolve to start Monday may come and go and the body’s metabolic memory is ticking away.  It is waiting and ready for you at this moment – the choice is all yours to live in the black.  Remember, it’s prevention, not prescription!

Preventing Diabetes?

What would you do to prevent blindness, going on dialysis or having the nerves in your hands and feet in constant pain?  Many of us would do most anything to prevent those things, but those same individuals may not realize that simple lifestyle management may help those things never come to fruition.

As we discussed yesterday, one in three individuals is at a high risk of becoming diabetic.  However, even with diabetes in your history here are 3 simple things you can do to prevent diabetes and avoid ever going on medication.

1.  Exercise 30 minutes per day.  The Landmark study done on those with pre-diabetes looked at 3 separate groups – one group was the control group which means no intervention was given.  The second group was put on Metformin, a drug that both prevents and treats diabetes.  The third group was given a small amount of guidance regarding diet and lifestyle and exercised 30 minutes per day.

The results showed there was no change in group one.  Group two had lowered their risk of diabetes by 30 percent.  Group 3 lowered their risk of diabetes by 58 percent.

Walking just half an hour per day can lower diabetes risk by 58%?  Absolutely!  How does that work?  Even a moderate walk can make your insulin work better by 50 percent for the rest of the day.  This decrease only works for about 24 hours so near daily exercise is essential.

2.  Sleep at least 7-8 hours per night.  Multiple studies in the last 5 years have shown that lack of sleep lowers insulin sensitivity.  These sleep studies revealed that individuals who slept less than 7 hours per night had morning blood sugars in the diabetic range in those without diabetes.  When the subjects returned to over 7 hours of sleep per night their blood sugars became normalized.

3.  Eat protein at each meal with non-processed forms of carbohydrate.  I could talk about this one all day long and it is explained at length in my new book A Recipe for Life.  If you eat some sort of protein at each meal and snack such as lean meat, poultry, fish, nuts/seeds, low fat plain yogurt, cottage cheese, etc. and balance it with fruits, vegetables, and some healthy form of fat such as avocado or olive oil it will greatly assist in keeping your blood sugars normalized.  This type of eating requires shopping on the perimeter of the grocery store.

Walk a half hour per day, sleep 7.5 hours per night and eat a healthy balanced diet versus go on medications or have terrible health consequences in later years?  Sounds like a slam dunk to me – remember it’s prevention not prescription.