Type 2 Diabetes -The new skinny girl disease?
Published by Clinic Admin on Feb 17, 2012 in
Health Tips
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These days, ‘Beauty is only skin deep’ takes on a whole new meaning for women young and old - with type 2 diabetes cases growing in numbers every year in Canada.
What is type 2 diabetes?
Your body gets energy by making glucose (sugar) from foods like bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, milk and fruit. To use this glucose, your body needs insulin. Insulin is a hormone that helps your body control the level of glucose (sugar) in your blood. Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which your pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or your body does not properly use the insulin it makes. If you have type 2 diabetes, glucose builds up in your blood instead of being used for energy. * (from Canadian Diabetes Association)
It used to be viewed that inactive, overweight people on junk-food diets where the ones who eventually developed type 2 diabetes. Being overweight is still a major factor for developing it, but other risk factors exist. Family history, ethnicity, age, lack of exercise, and food choices are also factors. In fact the amount of average weight or skinny people developing type 2 is increasing.
With more and more young women getting type 2 diabetes, it could also be called the ‘skinny girl disease’. Their body image looks healthy and trim, but on the inside, deep visceral fat (hidden fat) can build up around the abdominal organs (liver, stomach, intestines, pancreas, gallbladder). Visceral fat is far worse for the body then surface fat (subcutaneous fat), and is much harder to loose then the cellulite in your legs!
Because visceral fat wraps itself around these important organs, it can cause compression and inflammatory substances to affect your liver and pancreas, and lower your insulin sensitivity,(insulin resistance**) putting you at risk for type 2. There are other health issues that can occur as well but the biggest danger related to visceral fat is that it can go undetected - as in many cases it is not visible from the outside of the body.
Lifestyles of many women these days include lack of exercise, poor diet and being stressed from careers, family and other obligations.
These are the areas that need to be addressed in order to fight visceral fat from forming:
#1 - Regular Exercise!
The number one way to stop visceral fat from forming (or to get rid of it) is regular exercise, 30 minutes, two to four times a week. Moderate aerobic exercise that causes you to sweat is key in lowering blood sugar (muscles absorb glucose in greater amounts during exercise).
#2 - Proper Long Term Diet
Yo-yo dieting does not work to loose visceral fat! You must incorporate healthy eating habits such as:
- Reduce added fat intake (butter, margarine, mayonnaise.. etc)
- Eat smaller portions. Eat foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts in between meals.
- Switch to lower fat dairy products. Don’t give up dairy completely unless you are lactose intolerant.
- Limit the amount of sweets you have. Visceral fat is related to high sugar intake.
- Drink water. Water helps cleanse the body of toxins, drain retained water, and suppress the appetite.
- Add more soluble fiber to diet. Found primarily in oats, peas, beans, apples, citrus fruits, carrots, barley, and psyllium..
#3 - Reduce Stress
When you are stressed your body produces a hormone called cortisol. This hormone gives your body a boost of energy to cope (“fight or flight” response), but it also elevates blood-sugar levels at the same time – not good if you suffer from chronic stress issues. High levels of cortisol in your body also cause fat to be relocated and deposited into the deep visceral fat layers of normal weight women eventually contributing to type 2 diabetes. Chronic stress can even trump regular exercise and proper diet as it will still increase blood-sugar levels on it’s own – potentially bringing type 2 diabetes with it.
Diabetes is slowly becoming an epidemic in Canada.
It is linked to close to 40,000 deaths a year with thousands more people sick from it, including more and more young women and children. Type 2 diabetes is now the most common form of the disease, affecting nine out of 10 Canadian diabetics. But Canadian public health officials say Type 2 diabetes is preventable through diet and exercise.*** (from public health Canada)
Findings from the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study suggest that walking briskly for a half hour every day reduces the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes by 30%. **** (from HSPH)
In today’s world so much value is given to appearance to gauge one’s health, making it hard to look past your body image, into your inner health. Accompanying our busy lifestyles, are conveniences to make it easier - but it is these shortcuts that could be detrimental to our health in the long-run.
Maybe next lunch break, go for a walk. Instead of driving and picking something up from a fast food place, walk to a healthy restaurant, cafe or store for lunch each day. It would take care of two of the Fat-Fighting steps above. It might also relieve some stress out of your day as well!
Reference
* http://www.diabetes.ca/diabetes-and-you/living/just-diagnosed/type2/
** insulin resistance: Tissue responsiveness to insulin, meaning how successfully the receptor operates to permit glucose clearance, is termed insulin sensitivity. In the case of optimal insulin sensitivity, after a high sugar meal, insulin rises sharply, pushing glucose into the tissues rapidly, then dissipates. In the case of poor insulin sensitivity, however, insulin’s elevation is sustained due to an inability to force glucose into muscle tissues. Read more: Insulin Resistance Vs. Insulin Sensitivity Definition | http://www.ehow.com/facts_5724311_insulin-vs_-insulin-sensitivity-definition.html#ixzz1mZCtOtvG
*** http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cd-mc/publications/diabetes-diabete/facts-figures-faits-chiffres-2011/chap5-eng.php
**** http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/more/diabetes-full-story/index.html#Simple_steps
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