Healthy lifestyle is the best medicine to stop diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is one of the fastest growing chronic diseases worldwide, largely due to our sedentary lifestyles and the prevalence of being overweight.

Type 2 goes through a prediabetic phase, so is there any way we could halt its progress? Could there be a preventive diet?

Well, experts from Nottingham University think so. They’re claiming a combination of weight loss, healthy eating, behaviour change and exercise is key to lowering the risk of type 2.

To examine their theory, experts from around the world including Professor Ian Macdonald and Dr Liz Simpson of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham, set up the PREVIEW Project (PREVention of diabetes through lifestyle Intervention and population studies in Europe and around the world).

The researchers aimed to find out what the most effective lifestyle (including diet and exercise) was to fend off type 2 in people who are at risk of developing the disease.

The trial set out to compare a highprotein, low-GI diet against a moderate-protein, moderate-GI diet for diabetes prevention and weight maintenance in people at risk. High or moderate-intensity physical activity was done by both groups.

Over three years the trial was run in eight countries, including the UK, starting with an eight-week weightreduction phase followed by a threeyear weight-maintenance phase. In total 2,326 adults aged 25-70, who were overweight or obese and pre-diabetic, took part.

The trial was startlingly successful. Very few of the participants developed type 2 diabetes. The total number of cases was only 62, giving a cumulative frequency of one per 100 person-years.

The results showed there was little difference between the outcomes of people on the two diets, which suggested the eight-week weight loss period at the start of the study was crucial in keeping them healthy.

Prof Macdonald said: “Our findings did not show that one diet or exercise programme was superior to the other.

“Combining an increase in physical activity with having a healthy diet reduced the risk of diabetes.

“It is tempting to suggest that the rapid weight loss was the main contributor to the findings, but further work is needed to confirm this.”

Prof Macdonald said sticking to the diet for three years was not easy for the people taking part.

But he concluded that combining weight loss, healthy eating, changing behaviour and exercise was “more successful in reducing the risk of type 2 than any previous diabetes prevention study. This represents an important clinical advance.”

Work is needed to confirm rapid weight loss was main contributor