Healthy lifestyle leads to a significant reduction in type 2 diabetes.

Nearly everyone is looking for a way to live more healthily.  Now as you start a new year, maybe it is time to make a new move to a healthier lifestyle. The real question as you make this move is what is more healthy. A vegetarian would tell you that healthy lifestyles not eating meat. Many experts said that a healthy diet is eating less meat and more vegetables. The problem is there’s a wide swath of opinions and limited evidence to support one died over another.

No matter what your opinion is, most experts will agree that a healthy lifestyle can go a long way toward preventing and at least managing type II diabetes. Type II diabetes or adult-onset diabetes is directly tied to a metabolic impairment or metabolic syndrome. These metabolic impairments or syndromes are directly tied to central obesity.

Even though most experts would agree that a healthy lifestyle can reduce your risk of diabetes type II, there is little to no evidence to back up these claims. In fact, I would go a step further to say that no systematic review has summarised the relationship between combined lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol drinking, physical activity, diet and being overweight.

Despite this lack of evidence, medical experts continue to recommend healthier living as a means to reduce your risk of diabetes type II. The good news is that evidence is starting to mount to support this recommendation. In 2019, a new study returned with favorable results​[1]​. The new study looked at the incidence of type 2 diabetes and the risk of health outcomes among diabetic individuals. This study was a review and meta-analysis of prior research that tied the studies together to look for relationship between a reduced risk for diabetes and a healthy lifestyle

The researchers looked at a total of 14 different research studies that had a combined total of over 1 million patients. They found through meta-analysis that participants who had the least healthy lifestyle had a higher risk of diabetes than those with a healthy lifestyle. In fact, they found that the healthiest lifestyle tier had a 75% lower risk of diabetes. Not only did the healthiest tier have less diabetes, but they also had a lower risk of coronary artery disease, cancer death, and all-cause death.

Conclusions/interpretation

The bottom line: I recommend a healthy diet that includes daily exercise, portion control, avoidance of alcohol and tobacco, and adequate sleep. Based on this study, the adoption of a healthy lifestyle is associated with substantial risk reduction in type 2 diabetes and long-term adverse outcomes among diabetic individuals. You should use this research as another motivational tool to live healthily. If you follow these dietary changes you will probably also lose weight.