Many researchers believe that lifestyle modification programs addressing type 2 diabetes suffer from the serious defect of poor long-term compliance.
They believe that people adhere to the new lifestyle changes only at the beginning, but later lapse back into their old ways because of a lack of self-discipline, commitment, time, energy, or whatever other obstacles real life puts in their way.
A recent study, however, suggests that this view may be unnecessarily pessimistic.
The American Journal of Preventive Medicine has just published a study by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh debunking the assumption that natural solutions to cure type 2 diabetes are only temporary fixes.
The scientists looked at physical activity levels of people who participated in the Diabetes Prevention Program in 2002, finding that even over a decade later, they were still physically up to twice as active as the general population..
In 2002, American researchers implemented the Diabetes Prevention Program on a large number of relatively healthy subjects to assess which factors prevented diabetes the best.
They encouraged the participants to do only 3 things:
– reduce their body weight 7%
– reduce their fat intake to less than 25% of calories they consumed
– engage in 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week.
What they found was that people who lost a modest amount of weight together with physical exercise were 58% more likely to avoid diabetes than those who didn’t, and were almost twice as likely to avoid diabetes as those taking metformin.
That is, 150 minutes of moderate intensity weekly exercise together with moderate weight loss is better than drugs at preventing type 2 diabetes.