The risk of developing diabetes is increasing. Americans
born in the year 2000 or afterward have more than a one in three chance of
developing type 2 diabetes while other areas of the world such as the United
Kingdom, China, and the Arab Emirates are also showing increasing cases of
diabetes.
The dangers of diabetes include retinopathy and neuropathy
with complications of diabetes potentially leading to vascular events such as
stroke or myocardial infarctions. Symptoms affecting the daily lives of diabetics
include malaise, fatigue, poor wound healing, and sexual dysfunction that all
add to the degeneration of the quality of life for diabetics. It is estimated
that 65-80 percent of diabetics will die of a cardio-vascular event caused by
these complications.
The good news is that increasing physical activity while
maintaining blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and blood lipid levels many
of the causative factors for type 2 diabetes can be controlled. Some authors of
authoritative literature suggest that exercise, maintaining a healthy waist
circumference, maintaining an average body mass index (BMI), avoiding high
blood pressure, and staying away from the causative factors of impaired glucose
metabolism are critical to warding off type 2 diabetes.
The bottom line is that if you live a healthy lifestyle by
eating right, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, stop smoking, drink in
moderation, and get adequate amounts of rest you may never have to deal with
type 2 diabetes even if you have a strong family predilection toward developing
this condition.
This is an important consideration because you are the
example for the rest of your family. If your children see you eating junk food,
avoiding exercise, drinking alcohol to excess, and smoking you will be passing
these bad habits onto the next generation. Believe it or not, your children do
watch what you are doing and mimic those actions. Wouldn’t you rather they
adopt healthy lifestyle habits that will help them avoid the ravages of type 2
diabetes instead of suffering this largely preventable disease?
A huge factor in being able to avoid the agony of diabetes
via living a healthy lifestyle by eating right, exercising, maintaining a
healthy weight, stop smoking, drink in moderation, and getting adequate amounts of
rest may depend on adopting a different view of health and healthcare. In the
United States there are basically two different approaches to health and
healthcare with the differences becoming more pronounced as time moves forward.
The first approach is the one with the largest number of
adherents and is comprised of people willing to take all of the medicine or
undergo all of the surgeries the medical community prescribes regardless of how
extreme and ill-conceived those ideas become. The other approach is comprised
of self-reliant folks who research a subject, seek answers to their questions, and
then use logical thinking to arrive at a plan to increase their wellness and
fitness by giving their body what it needs to function as it was intended.
The group of people depending on drugs and surgery are
meandering down the road to ill health because they will be taking drugs for
the rest of their lives instead of giving their body the basic building blocks
it needs to thrive. Slowly but surely these people will lose the ability to
function in a normal manner and will end up incapable of taking care of their
basic needs at an earlier age than if they had cared for their body properly.
Chiropractic is the lone voice of wellness promotion in the
current healthcare system that purposefully avoids using drugs and surgery
preferring to have spinal adjustments instead of surgery, promoting an active
lifestyle as opposed to a sedentary (and often miserable) existence, and
espousing proper nutrition instead of consuming junk food.
It is your choice whether you choose the chiropractic
lifestyle endorsing health or the medical lifestyle that encourages life-long
prescription drug dependency to conquer diabetes.
