Losing weight can cut risk of diabetes

Reducing weight by just a few kilos is enough to halve the risk of developing type II diabetes. Additional weight loss pushes the risk even lower according a researcher at the UK Medical Research Council.

The incidence of type II diabetes is set to double in the coming decade, largely because of increasing incidence of overweight and obesity amongst all sectors of the population, according to Dr Susan Jebb of the MRC's Human Nutrition section. She described her work to a session at the British Association meeting entitled, "Get fit- stay healthy".

"We are seeing without doubt a global epidemic of obesity," she said yesterday. "We are concerned about obesity because it causes a range of illnesses." One of the chief amongst them is type II diabetes and obesity is a key risk factor for it. Patients with type II are unable to produce the correct amount of insulin, a substance in the blood that regulates sugar levels.

Dietary control and tablets usually control the insulin imbalance but the disease still causes considerable problems, she said including blindness, kidney failure and even amputations. "The best way to treat diabetes is to get people to control their weight," Dr Jebb stated.

She referred to a US study called the Diabetes Prevention Programme involving about 3,000 subjects. It called for participants to reduce their weight and on average subjects lost four kilos by the end of the programme's fourth year.

Even this moderate weight loss produced dramatic results, Dr Jebb said. "They reduced their risk of diabetes by a staggering 58 per cent." In a second and similar trial, organised by the drug firm Roche, during which subjects were also given a weight reduction drug, Zendos, average weight loss rose to seven kilos and this lowered the diabetes risk by a further 37 per cent she said.

The answer was to exercise more and bring down weight. "The single message is spend less time sitting down. Turn off the television." Obesity caused an extra 30,000 deaths a year in Britain, she added, and on average reduces life expectancy by nine years.