Studies make surprising links with diabetes
HABITS: Magazine combined a variety of study findings.
By NAN VIERRIA
McClatchey Newspapers
No time for breakfast and too much TV time can help trigger diabetes.
Fitness magazine, in its April edition, reports on nine surprising diabetes risk
factors. The disease affects 21 million people in the United States.
Skipping breakfast increases our risk 30 percent to 50 percent and watching TV
for two or more hours per day boosts it 14 percent, according to Fitness.
Pam O’Brien, the magazine’s article director, says the main reason for the story
was to point out that people can lower their risk in about a month.
As a former no-breakfast type, O’Brien began forcing herself to eat breakfast a
few years ago and has felt much better since.
"So many of us skip breakfast because we’re busy and just grab a cup of coffee,"
she says, describing her own former habit. "It’s one of the worst things you
can do. People that eat high fiber cereals respond better to insulin."
Diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association, is caused when, "…
the body doesn’t produce or properly use insulin." Insulin converts starches
and sugars into fuel for the body.
While the exact cause is still unknown, the ADA points to studies that have
concluded genetics and lifestyle factors like obesity and lack of exercise
appear to be linked to the disease.
O’Brien says her staff based its conclusions and risk factor percentages on
university research and other studies and then crunched all the numbers. While
Fitness magazine targets women, the nine risks also affect men.
The two risk factors that most surprised O’Brien were a large waist (risk
increases 330 percent) and high stress (184 percent).
"All of them were kind of surprising, but how much the waist thing raised your
risk surprised me most," O’Brien says. "We’re talking about the apple-shaped
body, fat in the abdomen, fat that is really dangerous."
Under American Heart Association recommendations, she says, women’s waistline
should be less than 35 inches. For men, it’s less than 40 inches.
"And somehow you don’t think of stress as being a factor in diabetes. When we
think of stress, we think of a headache or you can’t sleep."
O’Brien’s strategy to tackle the nine risk factors is to begin addressing two or
three and gradually work in more.
"You don’t want to feel like you have to change your life all at once," she
says.