Chris Davies: When battling diabetes, commit to a plan and never look back

By Chris Davies

TERRE HAUTE — Let’s say you were seeing your doctor for an annual check up. Your body weight is not where it should be and you dine out a lot. You mention feeling tired and rundown. Your physician can’t find anything on the initial evaluation but suspects diabetes. They will call with your lab results in a few days.

Your fasting plasma glucose levels are elevated as well as your hemoglobin A1c. Cholesterol is off the charts and your blood pressure is high. The nurse coaches you on diet and exercise and wants you to come back in three months. If you don’t take charge of your life you will be a type 2 diabetic and eventually insulin dependent — if you don’t die from cardiovascular complications first. Most doctors will tell you prescription drugs are a last resort if you won’t make necessary changes.

Now you are thoroughly confused because you don’t know where to begin. All the information is overwhelming. You heard you are a diabetic and need to get it under control. Where do you go from here and why?

Your best course of action is to get acquainted with a diabetes educator who is well versed in diet, exercise and lifestyle management. Commit to a plan and never look back. Most of your health issues can be resolved without medication through permanent lifestyle changes that include weight loss and consistent exercise. Both of those carry few, if any, side effects, are inexpensive and can be maintained for a lifetime. It is your responsibility to make these changes.

Alternatives include multiple costly prescription medications with increasing doses over time as your disease spirals out of control. Most cases of disease progression are linked to non-compliance with lifestyle changes and/or medication. Putting it bluntly; many people are too lazy to make necessary changes to improve their health. Apparently taking a pill gives patients the right to gripe about the cost and side effects. Others do nothing and watch their disease worsen to the point of hospitalizations, due to heart attack, liver damage, eye damage, nerve damage, etc. These are complications due to non-compliance and disease progression.

Sadly, most cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are self-inflicted. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) Statement paper from August 2006 states that the major environmental factors that increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, presumably in the setting of genetic risk, are overnutrition and a sedentary lifestyle, with consequent overweight and obesity. That describes the majority of the United States population.

Most disease can be managed and some even reversed through a little knowledge and sweat applied consistently throughout life. Drug companies merely provide a product and services for those who need them. But consumers are quick to blame them for profiting through high drug costs and side effects, yet don’t lift a dumbbell to help themselves. Remember, it still takes a drug company roughly $800 million dollars to bring a prescription drug to the pharmacy store shelf.

Understand that if most people lost weight, kept it off long term, and exercised consistently, the rate of disease would plummet. Managed disease has patients on fewer medications, if any. That is the best prescription a physician can write. Prescription drugs should be a last resort after diet and exercise (lifestyle modifications) fail.

I realize the genetic component in disease is that some can do everything right and still be saddled with disease. For those, most disease adverse events can be managed through lifestyle modifications. Unfortunately, those few usually have to take prescription drugs to manage their disease. Those are the folks these drugs are intended for instead of the lazy millions who refuse to get off the couch and go for a walk.

Next time you gripe about drug adverse events and high drug costs, remember the ADA says that consistent weight loss and exercise almost always improves blood sugar levels. Diet and exercise have very few if any adverse events, is inexpensive, and may help you live a more full and active life.

The ADA states that benefits of lifestyle modifications can be derived within weeks to months and often before substantial weight loss occurs. That means there still may be hope if you shut off the television, get off the couch and move.

Stop blaming others and make time to reduce and manage disease. Utilize your diabetes educators. Join Weight Watchers, Wabash Valley Road Runners, or just get out the door and get moving.

Chris Davies owns Fitness Solutions Inc. Reach him at Fitsolutions1@msn.com.

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