In this blog, we’ll cover some keyways to avoid developing type 2 diabetes and explain why it could literally save your life.
Of course, nobody wants to develop diabetes, but avoiding it is far more important than you may think. Diabetes, once developed, can cause irreversible damage which can lead to a host of problems in your cardiovascular system as well as many other areas of your body including your eyes and your kidneys. Diabetes is not a simple issue it can have ramifications for the entire body. For example, diabetic retinopathy which, as its name implies, affects the retina and can cause permanent eye damage ultimately leading to blindness if left unchecked.
Besides the increased risk of heart disease, diabetes also radically increases the risk of many cancers, as well as dementia. It turns out that developing diabetes can even increase your risk of developing serious mental health issues like depression and bipolar. Frighteningly having type 2 diabetes is more of a risk to your health than smoking.
Yes, having type 2 diabetes is more likely to kill you than smoking.
“Diabetes is not that serious!”
Diabetes is a serious condition which should be avoided if at all possible. Diabetes can be fatal, albeit rarely, but even in cases where it is not, it will force you into adopting massive lifestyle changes. You will no longer be able to enjoy many of your favourite foods because you will have to adopt a strict diet in order to maintain a stable blood sugar level. People living with diabetes have very volatile blood sugar levels, which means they can no longer get away with occasional binge eating of their favourite chocolate or sweet dessert. For a person with diabetes, if you eat a meal containing a lot of sugar/carbohydrate it could cause severe hyperglycaemia (very high blood sugar). Prolonged blood glucose spikes are toxic causing damage to every single cell in your body.
For every year lived with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes, 100 days of life are lost.
Hyperglycaemia occurs when blood sugar levels spike abnormally high. When blood sugar levels spike and cannot be brought back under control rapidly, it can cause damage to your nerves, blood vessels, kidneys, and cardiovascular system. In the worst-case scenario, hyperglycaemia can be addressed with insulin injections. While this does help manage blood sugar levels it doesn’t reverse the overall damage and consequent loss of life. In other words, for people with type 2 diabetes, although insulin injections do solve the immediate problem of raised blood glucose this doesn’t normalise life expectancy overall.
Of course, most people with type 2 diabetes don’t end up on insulin these days because many drugs help control blood sugar. But while the medications can be effective in controlling blood sugar, they still don’t normalise life expectancy. On average, people with type 2 diabetes lose at least 10 years of life. BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY!
The opposite of hyperglycaemia, Hypoglycaemia is abnormally low blood sugar levels. This is dangerous and can be life-threatening. To be clear, this blog focuses primarily on type 2 diabetes. Serious hypoglycaemia is much more of a risk for people with type 1 diabetes which is an auto-immune disease. People with type 1 diabetes invariably need to inject insulin because their own body stops producing it completely. That said, all ProLongevity clients are given continuous blood glucose monitors as part of the ProLongevity program. After working with hundreds of clients we’ve observed that mild hypos are incredibly common in people with pre-diabetes as well as type 2 diabetes. Albeit not life-threatening even mild hypos do cause brain fog, destroy concentration, make people feel miserable and destroy sleep quality when they occur at night. For example, one of our clients had experienced poor sleep for decades, waking up most nights with hot sweats. She assumed the problem was caused the menopause but when we changed her diet, her symptoms resolved. Not only did her sleep symptoms resolve, but her weight also came down and so did her blood pressure.
With the introduction of modern drugs, hypos are much less common, but they can still occur, potentially leading to a diabetic coma which is the result of the brain not getting enough glucose to function correctly. Treating a severe hypo is achieved by rapidly raising blood sugar levels. Thus, many diabetics need to ensure they always have some high-sugar foods to hand.
These risks illustrate just how serious having diabetes can be. Diabetes remains a life-threatening and life-shortening condition, despite the progress medicine has made over recent decades.
Can I avoid developing type 2 diabetes?
In a word? YES! Type 2 diabetes can absolutely be avoided. With the right diet and associated lifestyle changes, you can virtually eliminate this risk. Type 2 diabetes is so common that it’s seen as almost inevitable, but nothing could be further from the truth. The condition was vanishingly rare only 100 years ago (less than 0.1% of the population) yet today, having diabetes or pre-diabetes is virtually the norm. We need to ask ourselves why? The short answer is our diet.
If you want to live a long and healthy life, reducing your risk of type 2 diabetes is imperative. Estimates suggest that by 2025, 5.3 million people in the UK will be diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, in stark contrast to the 20th century when diabetes was exceedingly rare. The root cause of the diabesity pandemic is the rise of ultra-processed, man-made “food-like substances” as our founder Graham Phillips states.
Our blog about ultra-processed food covers this risk in greater detail but the TL-DR it’s a major contributor to our declining level of health. Simply avoiding junk food will drastically improve your health.
Is it too late if I already have diabetes?
No! It’s never too late to start improving your health. Although some aspects of diabetes can stay with you long term, doing nothing and burying your head is a health disaster. People who develop type 2 diabetes can certainly put the disease into remission thereby massively improving their long-term health and life expectancy. In other words, it’s never too late to benefit from the ProLongevity program. Interested? Book a free consultation below:
The problem many diabetics encounter is understanding the right course of action to improve their health. The standard medical approach is to “medicate” the problem by prescribing ever more drugs and even insulin when the other drugs fail. Our founder realised that this is not a permanent or sustainable solution. The only true way to address diabetes is to tackle the root cause. Look objectively at your diet and try to reduce the sugar, carbs and processed foods. Include more real foods in your diet. Eggs are a great starting point, for example, replacing cereal or bread in the morning for some eggs. Eggs are a powerhouse food. Replacing cereal (which usually contains a lot of sugar) with eggs will improve your blood sugar. We recommend trying a low-carb or even ketogenic diet. The keto diet is gradually gaining more evidence in support of its benefits, but we don’t recommend it to everyone. If you want to learn more about KETO, we’ve written a separate blog covering the finer details. Either way, we encourage anyone who wants to avoid or reverse diabetes to begin with diet & nutrition.
Can I outrun diabetes?
We might try to convince ourselves that the simplest solution is the right one. When it comes to diabetes it is a little more complicated than increasing the amount of exercise you do. Graham Phillips says, “You simply can’t outrun a bad diet.” You could run ultramarathons every day, but if you maintain a poor, unhealthy diet, eventually, you’ll suffer the same fate as someone who doesn’t. Exercise is not irrelevant in avoiding diabetes, but it is less important than diet. Another common misconception is that a lot of intense cardio will result in weight loss. The truth is that exercise has only a marginal effect on our total weight loss. For example, running a marathon will burn approximately 4000 calories, which sounds a lot but it’s only the amount of energy in a pound of fat. Run a marathon on an empty stomach? You’ll lose roughly a pound in weight after all that effort. The vast majority of calories (energy) that we burn comes from simply keeping our bodies “running”.
Conclusion
In this blog, we covered some key reasons as to why avoiding diabetes is so vital. TL; DR? diabetes is far harder to reverse than to avoid in the first place. We mentioned pre-diabetes and its significance for type 2 and we discussed some ways to reduce your risk of developing diabetes. Finally, we covered exercise and how it impacts diabetes risk. Above all, if you can maintain a good diet, you’ll be able to live much healthier into your later years of life. But please don’t be disheartened if you are diabetic, it’s certainly not too late to address your diabetes. If you are interested, we can help.
Book a 15-minute consultation with Graham: