A new study published in Diabetes Care indicates that US children have a high prevalence of diabetes risk factors.

The study was performed in 12 middle schools and had a total sample of approximately 1,740 eighth-graders. As expected, a large percentage of the sample was overweight or at risk of becoming overweight (almost 50%), the number one risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes. It should also be noted that almost 41% of the students that participated in this study had Impared Fasting Glucose. That means that their glucose levels where borderline higher than normal when tested after a fast. However, if you combine this fact along with the finding that large percentage of the students had high insulin levels after fasting we get to the conclusion that a lot of these children have already started developing insulin resistance which is the main cause of type 2 diabetes.

diabetes, children, type 2

Moderate alcohol consumption has been proven to be beneficial in cutting down the risk for many conditions and most importantly heart disease. So, what is the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes? A number of prospective epidemiological studies have shown that moderate alcohol consumption has an inverse association with the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. To be more precise moderate alcohol consumption appears to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by about 30%(Diabetes Care. 2005 Mar;28(3):719-25). The most recent published study Read the rest of this entry »

I will start with the answer to that question, yes Type 2 Diabetes can be prevented or at least delayed. Let’s start with the basics, in order to prevent any disease you first have to find what is causing that disease. Right now we have enough evidence about the causes of type 2 diabetes and we can safely pinpoint a number of factors that are responsible for it. Some of these factors include age, gender, race, ethnicity, family history of diabetes, overweight/obesity, high fat diet, high consumption of refined carbohydrates, fetal nutrition and physical inactivity. Just by looking at those factors we can easily divide them in two categories, the ones that can be modified and the ones that cannot be modified. From the ones that can be modified, obesity seems to be the most important of all since it has been estimated that obesity is associated with about 80-90% of all the cases of type 2 diabetes mellitus (Astrup & Finer, 2000).
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