How Lifestyle Interventions Can Help Control Chronic Disease

Disclaimer: Results are not guaranteed*** and may vary from person to person***.

Lifestyle Interventions Can Help Control Chronic DiseaseThe most important factor in the development of most, if not all, chronic diseases that can end our lives prematurely and change the manner in which we age during our lifetime is one fundamental pathological entity—INFLAMMATION.

When you think of this word, do you think of the discomfort associated with arthritis in your joints or back? Or perhaps the sore tooth you had to have treated by your dentist last year?

Well, the inflammation I am referring to involves the same kind of process but involves a different mechanism completely. The type of inflammation that is associated with most diseases is the chronic, slowly progressive type that you may not even know you have.

Heart disease, stroke, dementia, diabetes, and aging are all caused by a slowly progressive form of inflammation that occurs in the cells throughout your entire body. This systemic inflammation is associated with free radicals generated from many different sources in our diet or environment, or that can be naturally produced.

Although your diet and the amounts of exercise you participate in can produce large amounts of inflammation by making the process worse or it can also greatly help decrease the degree of inflammation inside your body.

A case in point here is the impact that diet and exercise have upon people suffering from type 2 diabetes.

According to a new British study, people who have type 2 diabetes can reduce the amount of inflammation inside their body by regularly participating in an exercise program and changing their diet.

This new study involved 593 adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes who were randomly assigned to three different groups: a diet intervention group for weight loss; an intensive diet and exercise program group, which included the addition of 30 minutes of brisk walking five days per week; and a control group that received the usual kind of lifestyle advice only.

The results of this study indicated that the people who were in either the diet intervention or intensive diet and exercise group saw great results. The chemical indicators of inflammation, such as CRP (C-reactive protein), were reduced by 21%–22% respectively after six months of intervention. Additionally, levels of the hormone adiponectin were significantly reduced, which means that their disease (diabetes) was actually improving.

The best information regarding this new research was the fact that compared to the groups who received the two different interventions, the control group that received the usual care did not get the same positive results, even after the use of medications during the trial.

According to lead investigator Dylan Thompson from the University of Bath in the U.K., “Our results show that motivational unsupervised diet and diet plus physical activity interventions, integrated into health care settings and with relatively modest resource implications, generate beneficial changes in various inflammatory markers in early type 2 diabetes.”

This information is valuable because it underpins the importance of lifestyle interventions to control the inflammatory process that plays such a big role in the harmful end-stage effects of a chronic disease that accounts for the associated morbidity and mortality rates.

Source for Today’s Article:
Gray, F., “Diet reduces inflammatory markers in ‘real world’ Type 2 diabetes,” Diet reduces inflammatory markers in “real world” Type-2 diabetes” News-Medical.Net web site, August 15, 2014; http://www.news-medical.net/news/20140815/Diet-reduces-inflammatory-markers-in-e28098real-worlde28099-Type-2-diabetes.aspx.