Prevention
Can Type 2 Diabetes be Prevented?
Being diagnosed with impaired glucose metabolism doesn’t mean that you will get type 2 diabetes but you are at a 10-20 times greater risk than those with normal blood glucose levels. Strong evidence shows that type 2 Diabetes can be prevented in up to 58% of cases in the high risk (pre-diabetes) population by eating well and healthy and regular exercising.
Management of Diabetes:
The main objectives in the management of diabetes are to:
- Maintain ideal body weight
- Reduce the sugar level in blood and urine
- Treat the symptoms and improvement in quality of life
- Prevention of infections
- Provide adequate nutrition
- Avoid acute and chronic complications
- Prevention of micro vascular complications like (retinopathy, neuropathy and nephropathy) and macro vascular complications such as cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and peripheral complications.
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Stages of diabetes prevention
There are four stages of diabetes prevention.Â
This includes the reduce risk factors for diabetes such as reducing obesity to reduce future risk for diabetes.
Primary prevention targets people who are in the stage of pre-diabetes to prevent the onset of diabetes. All people with pre-diabetes should be regularly screened and encouraged at each health care visit to pursue healthy lifestyle changes including a healthy diet, exercise, and weight control. When lifestyle is alone not sufficient and especially in those with combined IFG and IGT where progression to type II diabetes appears imminent, use of drugs with lifestyle measures may be considered.
Secondary prevention is to prevent the onset of complications in those who are already diagnosed to have diabetes. This can be achieved by meticulous control of diabetes with the help of diet, physical exercise, lifestyle modifications, and anti-diabetic drugs. Control should include holistic care beyond glycemic control such as attention to blood pressure and lipid profile.
Tertiary prevention of diabetes is aimed at limiting physical disability and rehabilitation measures in those who have already developed diabetic complications and preventing them from going into end-stage complications of diabetes.
Management of Diabetes
The main aspects of the management of diabetes include all of the following:
For a patient with mild Type 2 diabetes, diet, exercise, and weight reduction are enough to control high blood sugar. But despite alteration in diet and exercise, if the symptoms persist and continue with high blood sugar then depending on the types and severity of disease in individual cases, the doctors decide either on insulin injection or oral tablets for the patient.