Author: Tracey McAlpine Category: Health, Healthcare, Men's Health, Women's Health
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New guide for patients by leading diabetes physician Dr David Levy

Leading diabetes specialist Dr David Levy reveals in his new book what we can do to manage, and even reverse Type 2 diabetes.  Based on the experiences of his patients and research findings over the past twenty years, many of which may be unfamiliar to people with diabetes, and non-specialist healthcare professionals.

By bringing our understanding up to date, Dr Levy has created a 3-point check list of careful and evidence-based lifestyle changes to help Type 2 diabetes patients to get tough with their condition:

1. Weight Loss

Weight loss is a major goal of diabetes management.  Restricting your calorie intake to around 600-800kcal a day for eight weeks has been shown to reverse fat accumulation and restore normal fasting glucose.

A combination of higher-protein intake, low-GI carbohydrates and wholegrains, plus increased activity levels, offer the best hope for preventing weight gain after weight loss.  A Mediterranean diet including extra-virgin olive oil is a good option to choose.

Whilst there’s little evidence that superfoods or nutraceuticals are medically effective for Type 2, if they are low carbohydrate and high in soluble fibre (for example, bitter melon and okra) and fit in with the Mediterranean approach to diet, which can significantly reduce cardiovascular risk, then eat and enjoy them

2. Managing Cholesterol

Managing cholesterol and blood pressure problems through lifestyle changes and medication, such as losing weight, increasing exercise levels, stopping smoking and cutting down on salt and alcohol consumption, is at least as important as handling blood glucose levels.

Limiting alcohol intake, for example up to the current recommended limit (14 units a week), may reduce the risk of cardiovascular events as well as eye and kidney complications.

Moderate or intensive activity for 2.5 hours a week or more improves many aspects of general health and reduces the risk of most of the complications of diabetes.

3. Mental Health

Diabetes is closely related to depression, and other psychological issues including ‘diabetic distress’ and ‘diabetic burnout’.  Managing Type 2 diabetes is as much a matter of managing the mind as medication and diet.  Stress, especially at work, is a recurrent theme and it probably increases the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes so, look at ways of reducing your stress levels wherever you can.  Education through books like How to Get Tough with Type 2 Diabetes and sympathetic, careful medical management can help overcome these problems.

New knowledge and understanding of this very complicated condition are encouraging because we can now manage Type 2 with less emphasis on drug treatment and more on self-management.  Combining and balancing the two carefully, considering individual needs and wishes, is bound to result in better outcomes and happier people.

Dr David Levy

Dr David Levy was Consultant Physician in the Gillian Hanson Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology, Whipps Cross University Hospital, London, UK and Hon Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, UK, until December 2014.  He remains in active clinical practice at the London Diabetes Centre, specialising in diabetes and endocrinology, and is the author of many books for healthcare professionals.
 
How to Get Tough with Type 2 Diabetes is available from Hammersmith Books and Amazon*