Type 2 diabetes is a serious condition that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Patients diagnosed with this illness should do all they can to prevent the disease from worsening. There are various tips that doctors give patients diagnosed with diabetes that can help decrease the severity of symptoms and potentially reverse the disease. For overweight patients, this includes losing pounds and maintaining healthy body-fat ratios. Your body weight is an important factor to your health, especially when it comes to diabetes.
If you are obese or severely obese, your risk factors increase for developing conditions like type 2 diabetes. Some people are still unaware of the adverse effects of excess weight. It doesn’t become apparent until after they’ve been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.
If this is all new to you, you’ll find the following information helpful.
What’s Type 2 Diabetes?
This is a condition that can be debilitating if not treated quickly and efficiently. It can also become fatal if ignored or mistreated. Once you have been diagnosed with this illness, it’s time to start monitoring your condition regularly.
Most often a diagnosis of diabetes will require you to regularly check your blood sugar level based on your doctor’s recommendations. There are different forms of type 2 diabetes. For instance, there are some that don’t properly produce or use insulin. Insulin is a hormone that your pancreas produces to help move about the glucose found in your cells. This then leads to insulin resistance, which leads to elevated glucose levels.
Complications Associated with Elevated Glucose Levels
A variety of adverse health effects can occur when your blood sugar levels are abnormally high. When this happens, your cells are unable to get sufficient amounts of sugar and it causes nerve damage, especially in areas like the feet, hands, heart, eyes and kidneys. The following conditions have also been associated with high blood sugar levels:
- Nerve damage in the extremities
- Problems with vision and blindness
- Depression
- Heart disease and higher risk of stroke
- Amputation
- Kidney failure and renal impairment
- Decreased sexual desire and erectile dysfunction in both males and females
The Impact of Weight On Type 2 Diabetes
Excess weight is known for leading to adverse health conditions like type 2 diabetes. It’s important to educate yourself about the body mass index, which can help you to calculate whether or not you are within your target weight range. The BMI is based on a formula that divides the person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. This is the index frequently used in the medical community to determine when a patient is overweight or obese.
There are five different categories that you can end up in, depending on your BMI calculation:
- Underweight
- Normal (or target) weight
- Overweight
- Obese
- Severely obese
People who are overweight and diagnosed with type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of their cells becoming less sensitive to the insulin that their pancreas releases. Studies show that fat cells tend to have higher resistance to insulin than muscle cells. When people exercise, it seems that insulin resistance decreases in severity, since the muscles eat up additional sugar found in your blood and prevent insulin from being secreted and the sugar from being diverted to excess fat cells.
You also have a higher risk for health problems when you have excess weight in certain areas. So it’s not just about your total weight, but also where you tend to carry it. Those who have an apple shape, where the weight is carried around the waist, are at higher risk of health conditions related to obesity. This is compared to those who have more fat around their hips and thighs, known as the pear shape.
Anyone who is obese or severely obese is at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and certain cancers.
If you are a diabetic with unused test strips, you can get cash for test strips when you sell to a company who buys test strips. When you sell diabetic test strips, you’re helping other diabetics who are uninsured or unable to afford them. If you’re looking to sell test strips, then look for a reputable organization that buys them.