Reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes
How can we reduce the risk of diabetes? The top five protective factors for preventing development of diabetes are:1. Maintaining a healthy weight (BMI <25)2. Diet high in fibre and “good” polyunsaturated fats, low in “bad” saturated and trans fats and low glycemic load.3. Regular moderate to vigorous exercise for 30minutes or more per day4. Non-smoking🚭5. Low alcohol intake Of these, the most important risk factor for developing diabetes is overweight and obesity. 📚🔬The Nurses’ health Study was a very large long-term study following 85000 women for 16years. It showed at over 9 / 10 cases of diabetes was attributed to one of these 5 risk factors. 🤷♀️So what? Making…
The link between fast food and depression
🍴Increased consumption of fried 🍟🥓🍔sugary 🧁🍿& processed🥪🍕 foods is associated with increased risk of both anxiety and depression. ✅These large observational studies don’t give us reasons why eating more processed food or fast food increases the chances of people having depression, but it does suggest that there is very likely a link between the two. 🍅🍌🥦As an extra benefit, increasing your intake of “whole-foods” (ie vegetables and fruit and anything unprocessed) seems to be protective against depression. 👍Avoiding fast food and processed food (for example burgers, fried foods, pastries and high-sugar foods) is side-effect free, so it’s surely worth a try to see if it helps? 📖references:📚Akbaraly TN, et al.…
Reversal of type 2 diabetes
👩⚕️When I was training, diabetes was seen as a progressive condition, getting steadily worse over time, needing increasing medication, at first tablets, then leading on to injectables and then insulin. After diagnosis it was a relentless progression to more and more medicines as the disease advanced.🗞However, there is now a shift away from this – diabetes is reversible, there is an increasing body of evidence which supports this. There are various ways of achieving diabetic remission that have been described in studies:1. Weight loss2. Combination of low calorie diet and daily exercise3. Very-low calorie diet (VLCD)4. Mediterranean diet5. Vegan diet6. Intermittent fasting 7. Bariatric surgery As yet, there is no consensus on…
