A healthy diet rich in fruit, as found in the office fruit basket, can help prevent prediabetes, an under-diagnosed condition that makes people up to 15 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, according to new research.

An estimated seven million people in the UK have prediabetes, also known as Impaired Glucose Regulation (IGR), the Diabetes UK study showed.

The condition causes blood glucose levels higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes.

However recent research has shown the condition may still cause long-term damage to the body, especially the heart and circulatory system.

Furthermore, many people with the condition are overweight or obese at diagnosis and 90 per cent will either have a family history of prediabetes or have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Diabetes occurs because the body can’t use glucose properly, either owing to a lack of the hormone insulin, or because the insulin available doesn’t work effectively.

Yet crucially, prediabetes can often be reversed and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes reduced by 60 per cent, simply through losing even just a moderate amount of weight, adopting a healthy, balanced diet and increasing physical activity levels.

Douglas Smallwood, chief executive of Diabetes UK emphasised that identifying and educating people with prediabetes was vital.

"It’s not too late for many to make healthy lifestyle changes, reverse the condition completely and reduce their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes," he said.

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under Office Fruit Blog-2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.