How To Reduce Your Risk of Developing Diabetes

The researchers, from 23 universities in Spain and Harvard Chan School, split 4,746 PREDIMED-Plus participants into an intervention group and a control group and followed their health outcomes for six years. The intervention group adhered to a Mediterranean diet; reduced their caloric intake by about 600 calories per day; engaged in moderate physical activity, such as brisk walking and strength and balance exercises; and received professional support for weight loss control. The control group adhered to a Mediterranean diet without calorie restriction, exercise guidance, or professional support. Participants ranged from age 55 to 75, were overweight or obese, and had metabolic syndrome, but were free of T2D at baseline.

The study found that those in the intervention group had a 31% lower risk of developing T2D compared to those in the control group. Additionally, the intervention group lost an average of 3.3 kilograms and reduced their waist circumference by 3.6 centimeters, compared to 0.6 kilograms and 0.3 centimeters in the control group. Scientists found 3 simple tweaks that cut diabetes risk by 31%https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250829022835.htm Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250829022835.htm (accessed August 29, 2025).

Guess I’ll cut out beer.

The T2D-GENE Trial

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes was significantly lower in the lifestyle intervention group than in the control group.

University of Eastern Finland. “Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by diet and exercise even in individuals with a high genetic risk.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240807122749.htm (accessed August 10, 2024).

Effects of Genetic Risk on Incident Type 2 Diabetes and Glycemia: The T2D-GENE Lifestyle Intervention Trial – The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, dgae422, https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgae422

Remember, Stay as Thin as You Can as Long as You Can.

Statins Raise Diabetes Risk (but CV Benefit Outweighs the Risk)

Statins raise the risks for increased glucose levels and the development of type 2 diabetes among people who don’t have it at baseline, but those risks are outweighed by the cardiovascular benefit, new data suggested.

The meta-analysis of trials in the CTT Collaboration included individual participant data from 19 double-blind randomized, controlled trials with a median follow-up of 4.3 years comparing statins with placebo in a total of 123,940 participants, including 18% who had known type 2 diabetes at randomization. Also analyzed were another four double-blind trials of lower- vs higher-intensity statins involving a total of 30,724 participants followed for a median of 4.9 years, with 15% having diabetes at baseline.

In the 19 trials of low- or moderate-intensity statins vs placebo, statins resulted in a significant 10% increase in new-onset diabetes compared with placebo (rate ratio, 1.10), while high-intensity statins raised the risk by an also significant 36% (1.36). This translated to a mean absolute excess of 0.12% per year of treatment.

Compared with less intensive statin therapy, more intensive statin therapy resulted in a significant 10% proportional increase in new-onset diabetes (1.10), giving an absolute annual excess of 0.22%

In an accompanying editorial, Hertzel C. Gerstein, MD, and Marie Pigeyre, MD, PhD, both of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, noted that the decreased absolute annual incidence of life-threatening cardiovascular outcomes with statins in people at high risk for type 2 diabetes “clearly exceeds the 0.1%-1.3% per year increased absolute incidence of type 2 diabetes.”

Statins Raise Diabetes Risk, but CV Benefit Outweighs It – Medscape – April 09, 2024. — https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/statins-raise-diabetes-risk-cv-benefit-outweighs-it

Reversing Diabetes in Alabama

Reversing type 2 diabetes through a low-carbohydrate diet is clearly an evidence-based approach. Yet, thus far, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs the scientific reviews for the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s top nutrition policy, has neglected to acknowledge any of the more than 100 clinical trials on this diet. In the scientific reviews currently underway for the next iteration of the guidelines, due out in 2025, the USDA has declined even to examine this scientific literature. 

Reversing Diabetes in Alabama — https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/news/reversing-diabetes-in-alabama

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

Hippocrates, the father of medicine

LADA All-Cause Mortality

CONCLUSIONS

Despite having fewer metabolic risk factors than type 2 diabetes, LADA has equal to higher risks of death, CVD, and retinopathy. Poorer glycemic control, particularly in LADAhigh, highlights the need for improved LADA management.

All-Cause Mortality and Cardiovascular and Microvascular Diseases in Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults — Diabetes Care 2023;46(10):1857–1865 — https://doi.org/10.2337/dc23-0739

Nature Wants Us to be Fat

Evidence that Obesity and Diabetes are Driven by a Diet-Induced Biological Switch: How it Works and How it Might be Prevented — https://www.vumedi.com/video/evidence-that-obesity-and-diabetes-are-driven-by-a-diet-induced-biological-switch-how-it-works-and-h/

Blog post title is the same as the title of Dr. Richard J. Johnson’s book. The link takes you to a video that is approximately 37 minutes long. Enjoy!

What the Scientists Who Pioneered Weight-Loss Drugs Want You to Know – Wired Magazine

What happens is that you lose your appetite and also the pleasure of eating, and so I think there’s a price to be paid when you do that. If you like food, then that pleasure is gone. The craving for food for some people is taken away when they take GLP-1 drugs.

So you don’t eat through GLP-1 therapy because you’ve lost interest in food. That may eventually be a problem, that once you’ve been on this for a year or two, life is so miserably boring that you can’t stand it any longer and you have to go back to your old life.

What the Scientists Who Pioneered Weight-Loss Drugs Want You to Know – https://www.wired.com/story/obesity-drugs-researcher-interview-ozempic-wegovy/

Just another GLP-1 receptor agonist post. See Tirzepatide (another GLP-1 receptor agonist post) for more on the new miracle weight loss drugs that were originally developed to treat duodenal ulcer disease (bet you thought it was diabetes).

The entire article is worth reading.