5 Ways to Avoid Diabetes Without The Meds

[caption id="attachment_3190" align="alignleft" width="221" caption="Eating Right and Staying Active"][/caption]

Maintaining a healthy life style and diet is the smartest thing you can do to your body. I know that statement is so broad and obvious, but for some people it doesn't even cross their mind. Here are 5 ways to avoid diabetes without taking any medicine:

New research suggests that when it comes to lowering your risk of diabetes, the more changes you make to your diet and lifestyle, the better.

Led by Jared Reis at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, scientists report in the Annals of Internal Medicine that people can lower their risk of developing diabetes by as much as 80% if they adhere to a combination of lifestyle changes: exercising more, not drinking as much alcohol, quitting smoking, avoiding obesity and eating high-fiber, low-fat foods.

Although the advice sounds familiar, the new study is the first to demonstrate the effect of combining all the recommendations together. Previous studies have shown that losing weight or eating healthier can independently help reduce the risk of diabetes, but this study is the first to show the potential cumulative benefits of making multiple lifestyle changes.

The study involved more than 207,000 men and women aged 50 to 71 who were enrolled in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)–AARP Diet and Health Study. The participants were all healthy and free of heart disease, cancer and diabetes at the start of the study in 1995-96. When they joined, the volunteers filled out questionnaires about their lifestyle and diet, including what they ate, how much they weighed, how physically active they were, and whether they smoked or drank alcohol. The researchers tracked them for nearly a decade to see who developed diabetes.