Turkish professor highlights steps to prevent diabetes

By Yesim Sert Karaaslan

ANKARA (AA) - Healthy food and exercise are key elements in preventing diabetes, a Turkish university professor told Anadolu Agency.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview, Prof. Bulent Yildiz, who is a faculty member at the Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara, said: "Diabetes is a disease that continues throughout a person's life and it is chronic.

"Diabetes can be prevented by healthy eating and by moving the body."

Yildiz said more than 400 million people from around the world suffer from diabetes, a figure which continues to grow annually.

"Diabetes is an insidious disease that can cause loss of sight, cardiovascular diseases, strokes, renal insufficiency," he said. "Physical activities are very important to elude diabetes."

Yildiz said in recent years "resistance exercise" has come to be considered as one of the most discussed topics in health research. Scientific research has proven that “resistance exercise” can prevent weight lose, especially in type 2 diabetes patients, he said.

"It is understood that patients do not follow doctor's suggestions and do not do enough exercise," he said. "Exercise and moving the body often can achieve healthy weight loss and can make the body control sugar amount."

He highlighted that 15 to 20 percent of the patients, unfortunately, do not achieve healthy weight loss and sugar control "even if they do their exercises correctly."

The professor said the metabolism response in type 2 diabetic patients could differ. The research show the more sugar the body has, the less response it gives to exercise.

In the treatment of diabetes, medicines can affect exercises as well. If a diabetes medicine has “metformin” – an orally-taken diabetes medicine that helps control the body's blood sugar level – then on the days when a patient exercises, the medicine's sugar control level can decrease.

Yildiz said the plan to beat diabetes "should be done individually" and exercises "should be tracked with mobile applications" so that exercise levels can be arranged accordingly.

"It is a must for diabetes patients to take medicine and it should not be changed without a doctor's consent," he added.

The fourth annual meeting of EndoBridge — co-hosted by the Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism of Turkey, Endocrine Society, and European Society of Endocrinology — took place in Antalya, Turkey between Oct. 20 and Oct. 23, 2016.

The three-day program included 24 state-of-the-art lectures, 16 interactive case discussion sessions, and poster case presentations providing a comprehensive update across hormonal disorders including diabetes and lipid disorders.