The Greatest Diabetes Risk Factors Discovered

Type 2 diabetes is considered a lifestyle disease, meaning that it’s caused primarily by our modern Western lifestyle.

What exactly about our modern lifestyle causes type 2 diabetes, and how can we avoid it?

That’s the burning question a new study in Nature Medicine addresses. It all comes down to three easily avoidable factors.

Researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University reviewed studies published between 1990 and 2018 and constructed a model that estimates the contributions of various lifestyle factors and dietary habits to the occurrence of diabetes.

According to this model, unhealthy eating contributed significantly to more than 14.1 million new cases of type 2 diabetes across 184 countries in 2018, making up more than 70% of all new diagnoses worldwide.

Let’s see what else they found:

1. There were 11 dietary factors that contributed to diabetes.

2. The strongest effects were from three dietary habits:
- inadequate consumption of whole grains,
- overconsumption of refined rice and wheat,
- excessive intake of processed meat.

3. High fruit juice consumption, underconsumption of non-starchy vegetables, and too low an intake of nuts and seeds were also linked with the occurrence of diabetes, but not with as many cases as the three dietary factors above.

The most important finding here is that the inadequate consumption of whole grains, overconsumption of refined rice and wheat, and excessive intake of processed meat are the greatest contributors to diabetes.

In other words, eating the wrong types of grains is seriously problematic.

The refined grains that we should avoid include white bread, white rice, white pasta, corn flakes, sugary cereals, cookies, pastries, cakes, white flour tortillas, crackers and crispbreads made from refined grains, instant or flavored rice and pasta mixes, and instant oatmeal.

The healthy whole grains that we should eat include brown rice, oats, barley, buckwheat, millet, rye, bulgur, wild rice (which is actually a seed), whole wheat, and whole wheat bread, pasta, and flour.

If you already have type 2 diabetes, eating more whole grains is not going to be enough to cure it. For that, you need to apply the three simple, natural steps explained here…