Category: Diabetes

Lifestyle factors that signal how long we live.

The main lifestyle factors that increase your life expectancy are reducing stress and avoiding smoking, heavy drinking and type 2 diabetes, a study reveals.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented naturally by doing regular physical activity, healthy eating, and getting enough sleep.

A person’s quality of life, such as poor sleep and lifestyle risk factors such as obesity will all influence longevity.

Researchers found that diabetes and smoking are the leading causes of life shortening for both men and women.

Smoking lowers life expectancy by 6.6 years and diabetes by 6.5 years and heavy stress by 2.8 years for a man aged 30.

Smoking cause a 5.5 years fewer years, diabetes 5.3 years, and heavy stress 2.3 years decline in life expectancy for a 30-year-old woman.

Exercise is another lifestyle risk factor: men with a lack of physical activity had 2.4 years shorter life.

In contrast, improving quality of life and positive changes in lifestyle, such as eating lots of fruits and vegetables can boost longevity.

Eating vegetables makes people live longer by 0.9 years and fruits by 1.4 years.

For older persons, the factors that affect longevity were similar to younger people, except for the outcomes which were smaller.

People who live with moderation seem to have the best outcomes as well as living longer.

Psychological risk factors also affect life expectancy, for example, having some stress — as long as at a similar level to what is usual for others — did not reduce lifespan.

However, higher levels of stress took a few years off their life time.

The analysed data are from 38,549 Finish people aged between 25 and 74 with a follow-up period of 16 years.

Dr Tommi Härkänen, the study’s first author, said:

“Before, life expectancy has usually been assessed based on only a few sociodemographic background factor groups, such as age, sex, and education.

In this study, we wanted to assess the impact of several different factors to a person’s life expectancy, so we could compare their effects.”

The life expectancy differences between women and men appear to be related to some modifiable risk factors.

Professor Seppo Koskinen, study co-author, explains:

“What was interesting about the study was how small the difference in the life expectancy of 30-year men and women was based on the same risk factor values – only 1.6 years.

According to the statistics from Statistics Finland, the difference between the sexes has been over five years for all 30-year-olds, which comes down to women having healthier lifestyles than men.”

Education in this study appeared to have only a small impact on life expectancy if other risk factor levels were similar.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Härkänen et al., 2020).

The drink will help control blood sugar and lower the risk of diabetes by half.

Adults who drink tea habitually are more likely to maintain their blood sugar levels and are at reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.

According to a study, consuming dark tea in particular every day halves the odds for developing prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Dark tea such as Pu-erh belongs to the fermented teas category so it shouldn’t be confused with regular black tea, although that is also effective.

Adults who consumed dark tea every day were at a 53 percent lower risk of prediabetes and 47 percent reduced chance for type 2 diabetes than non-tea drinkers.

Dr Tongzhi Wu, the study’s co-author, said:

“The substantial health benefits of tea, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, have been reported in several studies over recent years, but the mechanisms underlying these benefits have been unclear.

Our findings hint at the protective effects of habitual tea drinking on blood sugar management via increased glucose excretion in urine, improved insulin resistance and thus better control of blood sugar.

These benefits were most pronounced among daily dark tea drinkers.”

Dark tea benefits

The added health benefits might be related to the fermentation method used in producing dark teas.

The tea leaves undergo a microbial fermentation process to keep their quality and flavour intact for a longer period of time.

More importantly, the microbial fermentation increases bioactive compounds such as free amino acids, polysaccharides, alkaloids, and  polyphenols.

These compounds are known for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, increase levels of good bacteria in the gut, and enhance function of beta cells in the pancreas responsible for the production of insulin.

Lower diabetes risk

In this study, participants were asked what type of tea they consumed (dark, black, green, or other tea) and how often (every day, often, sometimes, or never).

The team looked at the connection between the type of tea, the frequency, and the levels of glucose in the urine samples, insulin tests, and glycaemic status.

The body of a diabetic person has the capacity to reabsorb glucose from the urine resulting in increased blood sugar levels.

The analysis showed that drinking tea every day increased urinary glucose removal from the body and improved insulin sensitivity, lowered the risk of prediabetes by 15 percent and type 2 diabetes by 28 percent.

However, the beneficial health effects were higher for those drinking dark teas than others.

Dr Wu said:

“These findings suggest that the actions of bioactive compounds in dark tea may directly or indirectly modulate glucose excretion in the kidneys, an effect, to some extent, mimicking that of sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, a new anti-diabetic drug class that is not only effective at preventing and treating type 2 diabetes, but also has a substantial protective effects on the heart and kidneys.”

Professor Zilin Sun, the study’s co-author, said:

“Our findings suggest that drinking dark tea every day has the potential to lessen type 2 diabetes risk and progression through better blood sugar control.

When you look at all the different biomarkers associated with habitual drinking of dark tea, it may be one simple step people can easily take to improve their diet and health.”

Related

• Drinking tea has been linked to positive psychological changes.
• Green tea extract can improve working memory.
• Drinking tea 3 times per week linked to a reduction in heart disease.
• Yerba mate tea promotes weight loss.

The research was presented at the Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), (Wu et al., 2023).

Correcting this disorder in diabetics would benefit them as well as many anti-diabetes drugs.

Poor sleep can be a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, research finds.

Poor sleep quality, or changes in circadian rhythms caused by night-shift work, have been linked to alterations in insulin levels.

Other signs of type 2 diabetes include feeling thirsty all the time, losing weight, going to the toilet a lot and even blurred vision.

When poor sleep continues, the body makes less insulin, a hormone that allows the body to use glucose (sugar) as energy.

Blood sugar level is regulated by insulin and so depletion of insulin can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Moreover, poor sleep through the night increases levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol.

Cortisol weakens insulin productivity by increasing the blood sugar levels and the consequence is too much sugar pumping into the bloodstream.

High blood sugar, which is known as hyperglycemia, is a sign of developing type 2 diabetes.

High blood glucose levels can harm the blood vessels resulting in nerve damage, poor vision or even blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke.

Studies suggest that people with diabetes who have poor sleep have higher insulin resistance and so more difficulty in managing the disease.

Dr Kristen Knutson, the lead author of a study published in the journal Diabetes Care, said:

“People who have a hard time controlling their blood glucose levels have a greater risk of complications.

They have a reduced quality of life.

And, they have a reduced life expectancy.”

This study monitored sleep duration and quality in diabetics.

They also reported if they suffered from any sleep disorders like sleep apnea, snoring or insomnia.

Their results showed that diabetics subjects with poor sleep had 82% higher insulin resistance compared to those who had diabetes, but were normal sleepers.

Dr Knutson said:

“For someone who already has diabetes, adding a sleep treatment intervention, whether it’s treating sleep apnea or treating insomnia, may be an additional help for them to control their disease.”

Improving sleep is a powerful intervention — it can be as effective as common drugs for type 2 diabetes.

Professor Eve Van Cauter, co-author of the study said:

“This suggests that improving sleep quality in diabetics would have a similar beneficial effect as the most commonly used anti-diabetes drugs.”

Diabetes is predominant in the US and it is increasing rapidly worldwide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2015 more than 100 million US adults were suffering from diabetes or prediabetes.

The study was published in Diabetes Care (Knutson et al., 2011).

Patients with diabetes could lose 15 kg and beat the condition as long as follow this path.

Type 2 diabetes is reversible for up to 10 years if patients undergo a low-calorie diet and don’t regain the weight after losing it.

Diabetics, within only seven days of being on this diet, saw their insulin sensitivity return to normal due to the reduction of fat content in liver.

After eight weeks the pancreas’ fat content was reduced, insulin secretion and glucose control went back to normal levels.

Professor Roy Taylor, who has studied the condition for more than 40 years, presented these findings at the European Association For The Study Of Diabetes.

• Eating too much causes excessive fat in the liver and therefore the liver reacts poorly to insulin, producing lots of glucose (sugar).
• Any excess glucose will be stored in the muscles or as lipids in adipose cells also known as fat tissue.
• The excessive fat from the liver passes to the pancreas making pancreatic cells fail to produce insulin.
• But this can be reversed with dieting as by losing 1 gram of fat from the pancreas, insulin production can go back to normal and type 2 diabetes will be reversed.
• Beating diabetes through a low-calorie diet is achievable for 10 years after the condition starts.

Professor Taylor, said:

“The good news for people with Type 2 diabetes is that our work shows that even if you have had the condition for 10 years, you are likely to be able to reverse it by moving that all important tiny amount of fat out of the pancreas.

At present, this can only be done through substantial weight loss.”

Past studies show that all these abnormalities could be switched off if excessive eating is sharply reduced by a very-low-calorie diet (VLCD) also known as a crash diet.

A counterbalance study demonstrated that the metabolism will return to normal after losing weight as long as diabetes patients keep maintaining the weight loss.

Professor Taylor, explained:

“Surprisingly, it was observed that the diet devised as an experimental tool was actually liked by research participants.

It was associated with no hunger and no tiredness in most people, but with rapidly increased wellbeing.

The ‘One, Two’ approach used in the Counterbalance study was a defined two phase programme.

The Phase 1 is the period of weight loss — calorie restriction without additional exercise.

A carefully planned transition period leads to Phase 2 — long term supported weight maintenance by modest calorie restriction with increased daily physical activity.”

People with diabetes who followed this approach lost around 15 kg of weight and had normal glucose levels for many years.

The study was presented at the European Association For The Study Of Diabetes (EASD 2017) in Lisbon.

Diabetes is treatable without heavy calorie restrictions and draining weight management plans.

People who lose at least 10 percent of their body weight in the first five years after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are most likely to get rid of the disease, research reveals.

The study found that 10 percent weight loss can double the chance of remission compared with patients who lose no weight.

This means that people with diabetes can overcome the disease as long as they gradually lose weight.

Dr Hajira Dambha-Miller, the study’s first author, said:

“We’ve known for some time now that it’s possible to send diabetes into remission using fairly drastic measures such as intensive weight loss programmes and extreme calorie restriction.

These interventions can be very challenging to individuals and difficult to achieve.

But, our results suggest that it may be possible to get rid of diabetes, for at least five years, with a more modest weight loss of 10%.

This will be more motivating and hence more achievable for many people.”

More than 400 million people in the world have type 2 diabetes and are in danger of having heart disease, blindness, stroke, and lower limb amputation.

Medication combined with positive lifestyle changes can help patients cope with the condition.

But rigorous exercise regimes or strict diet plans have been shown to return blood glucose levels to normal and treat diabetes.

The weight loss management programmes usually require rigid calorie restrictions over a short period of time.

Past studies have been shown that nine out of ten newly diagnosed patients and 50 percent of people with long-term diabetes have recovered from the disease when they followed an intensive low-calorie diet for eight weeks under clinical supervision.

The very low calorie diet involves eating 700 calories per day, a similar amount to one large cheeseburger.

Professor Simon Griffin, study senior author, said:

“This reinforces the importance of managing one’s weight, which can be achieved through changes in diet and increasing physical activity.

Type 2 diabetes, while a chronic disease, can lead to significant complications, but as our study shows, can be controlled and even reversed.”

The study was published in Diabetic Medicine (Dambha-Miller et al., 2019).

A compound found only in this food can help stop type 2 diabetes and fight obesity.

Avocados contain a fat molecule that could help prevent diabetes and maintain healthy weight by improving blood glucose levels, glucose metabolism, and insulin sensitivity.

Avocatin B (AvoB), which is found only in avocados, has the ability to counter incomplete oxidation processes in the muscles and pancreas and lowers insulin levels.

Participants in this study were given an AvoB dietary supplement alongside eating a Western diet.

The results showed that those who were on AvoB supplements lost weight and improved insulin sensitivity with no adverse effect on skeletal muscle, liver or the kidneys.

More than one-in-three of US, British and Canadian teenagers and adults are overweight or obese, which in turn can lead to type 2 diabetes.

The insulin hormone sends a signal to the body to grab glucose and use it as a fuel for energy.

But people with diabetes are insulin resistant meaning their body cannot properly remove the blood glucose.

Those problems can result in poor fat metabolism and increased fatty acids (fat accumulation) in the insulin sensitive tissues such as liver and muscles.

Fatty acid breakdown occurs in the mitochondria, tiny cells known as powerhouses since they generate energy in the body.

In normal situations, the body burns the fat through the fatty acid oxidation process but diabetes or obesity blocks this process and fat oxidation won’t be completed.

The study shows that AvoB in avocados can counter the incomplete oxidation process in the pancreas and skeletal muscle.

Professor Paul Spagnuolo, the study’s leader, said:

“Eating avocados alone would likely be ineffective, as the amount of natural avocatin B varies widely in the fruit and we still do not fully understand exactly how it is digested and absorbed when we consume a whole avocado.

Although avocados have been touted as a weight-loss food.”

Mr Nawaz Ahmed, the study’s first author, said:

“We advocate healthy eating and exercise as solutions to the problem, but that’s difficult for some people. We’ve known this for decades, and obesity and diabetes are still a significant health problem.”

The study was published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research (Ahmed et al., 2019).

Doing this before drinking coffee helps us keep blood sugar levels under control and lowers the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

A cup of strong coffee in the morning before breakfast might help to perk us up after a poor night’s sleep, but it also has an unexpected knock-on effect.

Drinking caffeinated coffee before breakfast imbalances blood sugar levels which results in developing insulin resistance.

However, coffee after breakfast seems to be safe as it doesn’t cause this negative metabolic effect.

Although one poor night’s sleep has little effect on our metabolism, a coffee before breakfast causes glucose intolerance, a study reveals.

Glucose intolerance is a metabolic condition that can lead to prediabetes and heart disease.

Our blood glucose levels must be kept within the normal range to minimize the odds of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Because of this, researchers emphasise the considerable health problems of drinking coffee before breakfast, given how popular morning coffee is across the world.

Previous studies show that lack of sleep over multiple nights or even over one night can increase the risk of metabolic syndrome (combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity).

This study suggests that one night’s sleep deprivation won’t elevate blood glucose and abnormal insulin response in the morning.

Yet, they found that a strong black coffee an hour after waking caused a 50 percent increase in blood glucose levels.

Previous research has shown that caffeine potentially can cause our body to become resistant to insulin.

Professor James Betts, study co-author, said:

“We know that nearly half of us will wake in the morning and, before doing anything else, drink coffee — intuitively the more tired we feel, the stronger the coffee.

This study is important and has far-reaching health implications as up until now we have had limited knowledge about what this is doing to our bodies, in particular for our metabolic and blood sugar control.

Put simply, our blood sugar control is impaired when the first thing our bodies come into contact with is coffee especially after a night of disrupted sleep.

We might improve this by eating first and then drinking coffee later if we feel we still feel the need it.

Knowing this can have important health benefits for us all.”

The study was published in the British Journal of Nutrition (Smith et al., 2020).