We are in the midst of an epidemic of diabetes. About 75 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Not sure if you realized it, but the U.S. population will crack 300 million very shortly, so that means a shocking one in four Americans have this problem. Most of the problem is concentrated in adults as it is unusual for type 2 diabetes to occur in children under 10, so we may be approaching one in three American adults who have some form of diabetes. This is just staggering. Diabetes, unlike cancer, is a chronic degenerative disease that is relatively easily treated and responds just marvelously to nearly any committed dedicated efforts that address the underlying cause of the problem. However, it would be better to treat it before it occurs and the earlier the better, as this study in teens strongly suggests. The solution for teens and adults to beat the onset of type 2 diabetes, as well as decrease the odds they may die in middle age, doesn't come in the form of a pill or a surgical procedure intended to reduce their appetites. One of the essential "miracle" solutions quite simply is exercise. It defeats diabetes by increasing the sensitivity of insulin receptors so the insulin that is present works much more effectively, and your body doesn't need to produce as much. Insulin is the key to the vast majority of chronic illness. Blood sugar is only the symptom in most diabetics; the real challenge is to control your insulin levels. Once the insulin levels are stabilized, it is common for the blood sugar to come back to normal levels. Fortunately, insulin is very easy to influence by means of healthy eating and exercise. One of the keys in using exercise to normalize insulin levels (with secondary benefits such as weight loss and normalization of blood sugars), is to make certain minimum thresholds are met. It is my experience that most people are not exercising enough. I believe exercise needs to be viewed like a drug -- if the dose is not high enough, it will not work. There are three important variables to consider when you exercise: Length of time Frequency Intensity I encourage my patients to gradually increase the amount of time they are exercising to one hour per day. Initially the frequency is daily. This is a treatment dose until you normalize your weight or insulin levels. Once normalized, you will only need exercise three to four times per week. Exercise hard enough so that it is very difficult to talk to someone next to you. When you are exercising that hard, your cardiovascular system is under such a significant stress that the mere act of talking makes you unable to provide your body with enough oxygen because of the diversion of airflow. But if you cannot carry on a conversation at all, then you have gone too far and need to decrease the intensity slightly. Most people don't exercise at the appropriate intensity and as a result aren't able to obtain the benefits. nutritional typing is really the other key. I used to think that all diabetics needed to avoid grains to normalize insulin, but experience with nutritional typing has shown this to not be true. Unlike the Atkins approach, we have been astounded to find that carb types actually do quite well when eating right for their nutritional type, which means a HIGH-carb, low-protein, low-fat diet. Carb types lose weight and their insulin and blood sugars normalize. This is amazing as if you put a protein type on the same foods they would gain weight and their insulin and blood sugars would rise. If you want to learn more about nutritional typing you can take our free mini course.