Nov 02 2009
Lifestyle changes or medication?
Which would you rather do to decrease your risk of developing a chronic illness such as diabetes: make some changes to your lifestyle, or take medication?
A new 10 year follow-up study from the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) trial followed 2800 adults at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The results, published in the October 2009 issue of The Lancet, show that lifestyle changes work better than medication.
Just what are lifestyle changes? We’re talking about healthier eating habits, maintaining a healthy weight, regular daily activity and exercise, not smoking, and finding healthy ways to deal with stress. The folks who utilize these methods reduced their risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 34%. Only 18% of the people who took medication (in this study, the medication used was metformin) reduced their risk of developing diabetes.
Sure, making changes to your usual eating, exercise, and stress management habits takes some time and effort. Popping a pill is comparatively easy. However, if you truly want to decrease your risk of chronic disease, making even small changes to your daily habits will give you vastly improved results.
This is where coaching can help. Set long term goals, and then break those goals down into realistic and achieveable 3-month goals. Develop a weekly strategy to meet those 3-month goals, and then set new 3-month goals. Personal coaching helps you through this entire process, giving you support, encouragement, and accountability. If you want to live a healthy, active, fulfilled life; don’t you owe it to yourself to get started, today?