Are people with a family history of Type I diabetes also more likely to develop Type II diabetes? Both of my Aunts on my Dad’s side had diabetes; one of them was blinded at an early age and both of them died from it.
Type 1 is now believed to be an autoimmune disorder. Susceptibility to autoimmune disorders may have an inherited component.
Type 2 diabetes is strongly (though not always) linked to excess caloric intake, and those calories can be in any form: sugars, starches, fats, protein. However, “excess” is not merely a number such as “2000” or “3000”. It is also dependent on basal metabolic rate, which is why exercise helps guard against it. There can also be a strong genetic component, with certain ethnic groups apparently having a low basal metabolic rate and a strong propensity to stockpile excess calories, leading to both obesity and type 2 diabetes. Such people have to limit their calories and/or exercise more than most people and living in an ad-soaked environment full of empty calories doesn’t help them to do that.
If you have a strong family history of Type 1 diabetes then you have more risk of getting that type of diabetes. I’m not aware of any preventive measures you can take for that.
If you have a strong family history of Type 2 diabetes then that is the one you’re most likely to get. In that case you can reduce your risk by limiting calories, controlling your weight, and exercising but even if you do everything right you might still get it. You can reduce your risk, you can’t eliminate it.
If your family tends to Type 1 then you’re not at increased risk of Type 2 - although controlling your weight and exercising is good for preventing a lot of other problems, too. I have no blood relatives with any form of diabetes, yet I was given the same advice: eat right, control my weight, exercise - to combat my own family’s curse of heart disease.
For those interested in the effects of food on health, I highly recommend The Cooking Channel’s Food Hospital.
I recently skim read that book, olives, and I wasn’t very impressed with it either. I read another book called** Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar** and I found that a much more compelling read.
That said, I have eliminated wheat products from my diet for over a year now and I have seen a lot of benefits. Firstly, I’m eating more protein/fat as a result and I find my appetite is much more stable throughout the day. For example, I used to eat two slices of toast with spread for breakfast at 7am, and I would be hungry again a couple of hours later. I now eat eggs and bacon for breakfast and don’t feel hungry again until around 11am.
The biggest change has been my digestion. I used to have a very sensitive stomach, each morning by the time I got to work, I would need to go to the toilet urgently, etc. Now my bowel movements are much more ‘normal’.
I’ve done this at the same time as doing weight watchers, so I have lost weight but I think it has been a helper (by keeping my appetite steady) rather than a cause of the weight loss.
Broomstick, thank you very much for your thoughtful reply to my questions here.
And everyone else of course!
Olives (and others) as it happens I’m at my-sister-the-doctor’s house this week and thus have access to her home medical library (fascinating stuff, even if some of the pictures are NSFW. Or lunchtime) While perusing the New England Journal of Medicine, September 27, 2012 issue I noted an article with the title “What’s Preventing Us from Preventing Type 2 Diabetes?”
In summary, the Diabetes Prevention Program clinical trial and its 10 year outcomes studies showed that “lifestyle intervention” (diet and exercise, basically, sufficient to induce moderate weight loss) reduced the incidence of Type 2 diabetes by 58%. Use of metformin alone reduced a conversion from pre-diabetes to full diabetes by 31%.
In other words, there is scientific proof that
- A good diet
- Exercise
- controlling your weight
will help prevent Type 2 diabetes. The good thing is that you can do all of that yourself at low cost with low risk. The bad news, of course, is that it will probably involve changing long-standing habits. However, you CAN do something to reduce your risk.
If you are pre-diabetic then use of metformin (after consultation with an actual doctor, of course) can slow down or even the stop the disease progression. Now, I know people don’t like taking daily drugs, and I’m no fan of the concpet, either, but personally I’d rather take a daily pill than go blind or lose a limb or wind up on dialysis. If I could take a daily pill to prevent an on-going health problem, or treat it effectively, sign me up. There’s worse things than daily medication.
Anyhow, it underlines that the problem here is much about excess calories and uncontrolled weight rather than whether or not a person eats actual sugar.
ETA: It also shows that even if you do everything right a certain number of people will get diabetes anyway. I didn’t understand everything in the study but I gather that even for those who developed diabetes they showed less damage from elevated blood sugar than those who were not at a proper weight and did not exercise. In other words, even if all this doesn’t prevent the disease, it still lessens the effect of the disease. So win-win in my book.
So OP, did you stick with it?
Is wheat bad for me? Yes, as it turns out. Ten years after an ulcerative colitis diagnosis, which included years of incredible pain, passing blood, an untold number of near-accidents in my pants and too many ACTUAL accidents, I discovered that gluten is a MAJOR trigger for me. Gluten and wheat is pretty ubiquitous in American food, and so I had no idea what triggered it. I just thought EVERYTHING did.
I’m not overly happy about it. I LOVE noodles, bread, pizza, cookies, cakes, breaded fried chicken, sandwiches and burgers, etc. It’s a pain in the ass to avoid wheat, but the difference between eating it and abstaining is like night and day. Some people like to disregard the idea of ‘gluten intolerance’, but when the difference between not eating it and eating it is up to 30 visits to the bathroom per day pissing blood out your ass, there’s no arguing with it.
Same as for Face Intentionally Left Blank: I had major health issues for years that in my case manifested as rashes, high blood pressure, mood swings and after a homeopath suggested to stay away from gluten, all my symptoms vanished.
It is really annoying that gluten-free products over here are so much more expensive, but the results (for me) are worth it.
Not the OP, but I’ve stuck with it and continue to see benefits as outlined in my previous post.
It’s a reasonable interpretation of what he said, which was unfortunately ambiguous, not making it clear whether the “or” conjoined the “not”. I.e., is it ((not A) or B) or is it (not (A or B)). Both interpretations are grammatically justifiable, but only the former made much sense.