Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Week is taking place from Monday 26th May to Sunday 1st June this year.
What is Type 2 Diabetes?
Type 2 Diabetes is high blood sugar levels due to your body not making enough insulin, or the insulin is not working properly. High blood sugar levels over time can cause other health problems, like heart attacks and strokes, as well as other problems with your eyes, kidneys and feet.
Treatment includes regular health checks and getting support to be active, eat healthily, and maintain a healthy weight. You may need to take medication, including insulin, and check your blood sugars regularly too.
Many people can do things to try and prevent type 2 diabetes. There is no cure but some people with type 2 diabetes can put their diabetes into remission.
Know Your Risk
Type 2 Diabetes can go undiagnosed for years if you don’t have symptoms or if your symptoms are missed. It doesn’t just affect people living with overweight or obesity, although this is one of the risk factors, along with ethnicity.
There are many reasons type 2 diabetes develops but it mostly affects people over 25 often with a family history.
The first step is finding out whether you’re at risk. It takes two minutes and could be the most important thing you do today.
Find our your risk of type 2 diabetes, click here.
Diabetes UK Prevention Work
Diabetes UK are working hard to raise awareness, fund ground breaking reseach and campaign to create a healthier environment
Diabetes UK are supporting people across the UK to find out their risk and take action to reduce it. But this problem is too big to tackle alone, which is why we’re working to make it easier for people to make healthy choices every day. They are doing this by raising awareness about risk, helping you to take action, creating a healthier environment and funding ground-breaking research.
To learn more about what Diabetes UK do, click here.
10 Tips for Healthy Eating
Lots of factors can contribute to someone being at risk or diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. With the right support there are some things you can change, but others you can’t. Diabetes UK’s tips on healthy eating could help reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes UK share that living with overweight or obesity is the most significant risk factor. If you know you are living with overweight or obesity getting support to lose weight when you are ready is one way you could prevent or delay type 2 diabetes. Any amount of weight loss can help, research shows losing even 1kg can help to reduce your risk. There are so many different ways to lose weight, so it’s important to find out what works best for you and know what support is available to help you.Â
We know that not everyone who is at risk or living with diabetes type 2 diabetes is living with overweight or obesity. But whether or not weight loss is part of your plan, it is still important to think about the foods you eat. Research tells us that there are even certain foods that are linked to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes.Â
To see Diabetes UK top 10 tips for healthy eating if you are at risk of type 2 diabetes, click here.
Support from Diabetes UK
Whether you’re looking for diabetes information, or just someone to talk to, Diabetes UK are here to help. They provide helplines, local support groups, Type 1 Events, an online Learning Zone, and even insurance – to name a few.
To find out how they can help you, click here.
