Maintaining a healthy weight is always good for your health and overall wellbeing. It’s even more important if you are a diabetic. If you are overweight or obese, weight loss can improve your management of Type-2 diabetes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell us that losing weight can improve your blood sugar control and lower your risk for diabetes complications such as high blood pressure and plaque buildup in the arteries. By dropping the weight on the scale by just 5 to 10 percent, many patients have been able to reduce how much medicine they require.
Here are three ways weight loss improves Type-2 diabetes.
Improved Insulin Resistance & A1C results
When you have Type-2 diabetes, your body doesn’t properly respond to the insulin it produces, which causes your blood sugar to go up. That’s called insulin resistance, and it’s often linked to excess weight, according to the CDC. When you lose weight, your body becomes more efficient and can use the insulin more easily. Reduced insulin resistance is a good thing for diabetes management.
Because insulin sensitivity improves with weight loss, you’ll see better A1C test results. An A1C test shows your average blood glucose levels over the previous two to three months, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA).
Lower Blood Pressure and Improve Cholesterol
Diabetes and obesity are linked to heart trouble. The CDC reports that high blood pressure and cholesterol are common conditions among people with Type-2 diabetes. High blood pressure can damage artery walls, and too much cholesterol clogs your arteries, leading to heart attacks and death. Obesity is a known risk factor for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease.
The good news is that losing weight can lower your risk. In a study of 401 people who were overweight or obese, those who lost 5 to 10 percent of their body weight significantly lowered their total cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol. Those who lost more than 10 percent saw even more improvement, according to the study, which was published in September 2016 in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine. High-risk patients also significantly lowered their fasting glucose levels.
Delay in Disease Progression
According to the CDC, 88 million Americans have prediabetes, higher-than-normal blood sugar levels that aren’t high enough to be Type-2 diabetes and losing weight can lower the risk of advancing to Type-2 diabetes. A study published in May 2016 in Diabetes Care found that 40 percent of study participants who lost about 33 pounds and maintained that weight loss for six months were able to send the condition into remission. That this does not mean diabetes just goes away, just that the symptoms are greatly reduced. If you don’t maintain a healthy weight and return to unhealthy habits and/or gain weight, the symptoms return.
Having a difficult time losing weight? Maybe you can jumpstart your weight loss with the hacks found in this blog.