How healthy lifestyle helps against diabetes

The Kaduna State chapter of the Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria (APHPN), has advised  Nigerians to adopt healthy lifestyle in order to avoid diabetes and its complications.
The physicians in a statement said more Nigerians are increasingly coming down with diabetes, a non-communicable but preventable disease condition that contributes to the global burden of non-communicable diseases.
In the statement signed by the chairman of the association, Dr. Muhammad S. Ibrahim the physicians said the major risk factors of diabetes are consumption of unhealthy diet, tobacco use, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol consumption.
“Risk factors for diabetes also include high blood pressure and family history. diabetes is usually preceded by pre-diabetes which if untreated, will lead to diabetes within five years in about 15 to 30 per cent of cases. However, pre-diabetes often can be reversed through weight loss or maintaining normal body weight, diet changes such as eating healthy food, engaging in increased regular physical exercise, and avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol intake,” they said in the statement.
They said diabetes is a serious health condition that affected more than one and a half million Nigerians in 2015. “It is increasingly becoming one of the leading causes of death with about one third not even aware that they have the disease, not aware of its complications and the long term risks that it poses to their health,”