People with low levels of glucose tolerance can reduce the risk of getting diabetes through diet and exercise, research suggests.
Experts in China signaled that by introducing a group-based lifestyle of diet and exercise for a period of six years diabetes can be prevented or at least delayed for up to 14 years.
In 1986, patients were assigned one of three lifestyle groups – diet, exercise, and diet and exercise.
Another group was left without being encouraged to make any lifestyle changes with regards to fitness or eating habits.
The study published in medical journal The Lancet found that over the first six years, the groups which were told to make lifestyle changes were 51 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with the disease.
"This study has shown that, in Chinese people with impaired glucose tolerance, group-based interventions targeting lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise produce a durable and long-lasting reduction in incidence of type 2 diabetes," said the authors of the report.
Researchers vary on what time the interventions should be introduced into the lives of people with reduced glucose tolerance.
Dr Jaana Lindström and Professor Matti Uusitupa wrote in an accompanying editorial: "We propose that lifestyle intervention should start much earlier, when people are normoglycaemic, to achieve true primary prevention of type 2 diabetes and its main consequence, cardiovascular disease."
