Diabetes prevention knowledge

The core logic for ordinary people to prevent diabetes is very simple - avoid controllable risk factors such as smoking, long-term high-sugar and high-fat diets, long periods of sitting, and long-term staying up late, and do regular blood sugar screenings based on your own risks. There is no so-called "100% sure-fire way to avoid diabetes", and there is no need to completely cut out sugar or eat a vegetarian diet to prevent it. Most people can reduce the risk of the disease by more than 70% by making moderate adjustments to their living habits.

I have been working as a follow-up worker for chronic diseases in the community for almost 5 years. The two extremes I encountered the most were office workers in their 30s and 40s. They drank milk tea and fried chicken every day and stayed up until two or three o'clock. They felt that diabetes was a geriatric disease and had nothing to do with them. Last time, a 28-year-old programmer came to check and his fasting blood sugar had reached 6.3, indicating that fasting blood sugar regulation was impaired. He still said he was not feeling well.； The other is an old man whose blood sugar has just been found to be at a normal high level. He is so frightened that he only dares to eat less than half a bowl of rice. He dares not touch anything with a little sweetness. He only eats multi-grain steamed buns. In the end, he is malnourished and his blood sugar fluctuates even more.

Let me tell you something interesting. There used to be an aunt who danced square dance for two hours every day and said she wanted to lower her blood sugar. But she would buy a cream popsicle as a reward after every dance. She persisted in checking her blood sugar for half a year and it didn't drop at all. It even rose by 0.2. Do you think she was unfair? In fact, many people have a wrong understanding of prevention. It is not about how many "plus points" you do. The first thing is not to use the "minus points". There is no need to pursue eating whole grains every day. If you have a bad stomach and cannot digest hard multi-grain rice every day, as long as you reduce the amount of white rice by a quarter and add two more chopsticks to the dish, the effect will not be much different. Oh, by the way, don’t believe in the folk remedies of eating bitter melon or pumpkin to reduce blood sugar. I have met several elderly people who steamed pumpkin and ate it all the time in order to reduce blood sugar. Little did they know that the glycemic index of pumpkin is not low. The more they eat, the higher their blood sugar. This is purely an IQ tax.

Nowadays, the endocrinology community has two different intervention ideas for people with abnormal glucose tolerance. No one is right or wrong, it all depends on the individual situation: one advocates early medication, believing that taking metformin at a low dose can reduce the risk of disease by about 30%, which is especially suitable for people whose BMI exceeds 28, who cannot control their mouths and cannot move their legs.； The other is to give priority to lifestyle intervention. It is believed that as long as they can do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week and reduce their carbohydrate intake by 10% compared with before, 80% of people can return to normal blood sugar without taking medicine and suffering side effects. Last week, I met a 26-year-old man at the free clinic. His father and grandmother both have type 2 diabetes. He usually drinks carbonated drinks. His fasting blood sugar level was 5.9, which is the normal high value. He was told both plans. He chose to change his habits first, and changed his carbonated drinks to unsweetened sparkling water. He got off work two stops early and walked for 20 minutes every day. He planned to recheck in three months. This state is good. He doesn’t have to take medicine right away, and he doesn’t have to be too scared to eat.

There is another point that many people overlook: staying up late has a greater impact on blood sugar than you think. A reader who works in new media came to me for consultation before, saying that he usually eats a very light diet and is not fat. How come his fasting blood sugar is 6.1? After careful questioning, I found out that she worked on the plan every day for three months until 2 or 3 o'clock, and then forced herself to go to bed before 12 o'clock. After checking again within two months, it returned to 5.3. To put it bluntly, blood sugar regulation is linked to the metabolic state of the entire body. If you stay up late every day and put your body in a state of stress, insulin secretion will be disordered, and it will be useless no matter how healthy you eat.

When it comes to sugar-free foods, there has been a lot of controversy in the past two years. Some people think that eating sugar-free foods will not raise blood sugar. There are also studies saying that sugar substitutes will disrupt the intestinal flora and reduce insulin sensitivity. In the cases I have come across, there are indeed people who drink sugar-free Coke every day. Their blood sugar has risen after gaining ten pounds in half a year. There are also people who drink occasionally and have no problems. My suggestion is don’t regard sugar-free as a “free card”. Just satisfy your cravings once in a while. Don’t think it’s sugar-free and just eat two or three pieces of sugar-free cake at a time. The calories will really exceed the standard.

As a final reminder, don’t think that you don’t need to check your blood sugar if you are young. Current guidelines recommend that those over 35 years old should have their fasting blood sugar checked once a year. If there is a direct relative in the family with diabetes, you are obese yourself, or you often stay up late, it is best to add glycated hemoglobin, which can reflect the average blood sugar level in the past three months, which is much more accurate than a single fasting blood sugar.

In fact, diabetes is really not a scourge, and prevention is not so fancy. You don’t have to force yourself to do extreme diets or exercises that you simply can’t stick to. Just find a rhythm that you can stick to for a long time. Today, friends had hot pot and milk tea at a gathering, and eating lighter meals and walking for half an hour for the next two meals is much better than stress-induced blood sugar spikes caused by excessive anxiety after eating. If you are really unsure of your own risks, go to the hospital and get a call from the endocrinology department. It costs more than ten yuan, which is much more reliable than watching short videos for half a day.