Niki Bezzant: Are you the one in four?

Adding vegetables to your meals helps in the fight against diabetes. Photo / Kelly Cline

Opinion

More than a million New Zealanders are thought to have prediabetes, the precursor to type 2 diabetes. Before you start thinking "that doesn't apply to me", consider that this is one in four Kiwis and many of us don't even know we're at risk.

Type 2 diabetes is our fastest-growing health crisis. Forty people are diagnosed a day, a number which has doubled in the past 10 years.

This is a tidal wave of pressure on our health system and cost to our country. It's not something any of us can ignore.

It could be said this is a symptom of our changing lifestyles. We're more busy but less active. We're surrounded by abundant unhealthy food and persuasive marketing.

Many of us are cooking less, making it harder to control our health.

Prediabetes doesn't usually display obvious symptoms but some risk factors act as warning signs.

Diabetes and weight are linked; if you're overweight or obese you have a greater chance of developing the disease, especially if you're carrying weight around your middle.

Other risk factors include smoking, high blood pressure, heart disease and lack of activity. A combination of a few of these could mean a future with type 2 diabetes.

But prediabetes is reversible through our old friends healthy eating and exercise.

There's no perfect diet that's right for everyone but we do know the healthiest diets are based on eating lots of plant foods and fewer processed foods.

A Mediterranean-style diet, including lots of vegetables, oily fish, whole grains, nuts, olive oil and small amounts of red meat and dairy has been shown to lower the risk for prediabetes in people previously eating a more traditional Western diet.

Vegetarian and vegan diets have also been shown to protect against type 2 diabetes. You don't have to give up all meat though; a simple place to start is including more colourful veges in every meal.

The next step is moving more. Even moderate exercise such as walking for 30 minutes a day, has been shown to be effective, as can finding ways to get up out of your chair.

Australian studies link watching TV and being sedentary with an increased risk of high blood glucose levels.

However interrupting prolonged periods of sitting (even for a minute or two every 30 minutes) can improve insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance.

Several interesting studies show that insufficient sleep worsens insulin resistance and that sleep quantity and quality affect diabetes risk. Sleeping for fewer than five to six hours a night raises the risk of diabetes by 28 per cent.

Surprisingly, sleeping for more than eight to nine hours a night also ramps up the risk.

The bottom line is that paying attention to food, movement and sleep could help us avoid adding to those terrible statistics.

That's what Diabetes New Zealand is aiming for with November's Diabetes Action Month. I am pleased to be taking part in the MoveMeant Challenge, committing to 10,000 steps a day.

To check your risk of diabetes see diabetes.org.nz

Niki Bezzant is editor-in-chief of Healthy Food Guide