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It's commonly said that if you have a healthy diet and take exercise, you reduce your chances of developing that epidemic disease of the 21st century - adult-onset diabetes. It makes sense that if lifestyle can cause the problem, it must be able to prevent it too, but until now there hasn't been very good evidence to back that up. It's commonly said that if you have a healthy diet and take exercise, you reduce your chances of developing that epidemic disease of the 21st century - adult-onset diabetes. It's where sugar is badly metabolised, blood fats go up (as does blood pressure, often), and therefore the risks of arterial disease, stroke, heart attacks, kidney and nerve damage, and blindness. Not nice - so if you can prevent this late-onset diabetes it'd be a good thing. The trouble is that while intuitively it makes sense that if lifestyle can cause the problem, it must be able to prevent it too, there hasn't been very good evidence to back that up. 900 Finnish men and women who were overweight, aged about 55, and already had some abnormalities in sugar metabolism without being diabetic, were put in a trial of weight reduction, a low-fat high-fibre diet, and increased physical activity. Compared to controls, the ones given the program did better by about 2.5 kilos in weight, 3 cm in waist circumference, and their blood pressure more - and had half the rate of developing diabetes over a four-year period (one in 10 compared to one in five). The researchers felt confident that the lifestyles changes and the benefits were cause-and-effect, and the really dramatic finding was that none of those who reached four out of five of their lifestyle goals developed diabetes over the four-year follow up - suggesting the closer to ideal the better. Very few people dropped out of this program, which implies that if you know you're at risk then the motivation to save yourself overcomes the inconvenience.
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