In Australia, nearly two thirds of men and half of all women are overweight or obese. This is a key factor in the alarming rise of type 2 diabetes. Yet up to 60 per cent of diabetes cases could be prevented, or at least delayed, by people maintaining a healthy weight. The main keys to long-term weight loss and reducing your waist measurement are healthy eating and regular physical activity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you suffer from chronic disease such as diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, heart failure or indeed any condition that may cause you to collapse or be taken ill suddenly? Or do you know somebody who does?

Read the rest of this entry »

Self-monitoring plays an essential part in treating Diabetes. It allows you to eat normally and to enjoy a healthy life. The results from your self-monitoring will give you and your Diabetes care team the information that they need to adjust your therapy.

It also allows you to manage stress and illness much better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Medica

New compounds that act like the red wine ingredient resveratrol may offer a new formula for type 2 diabetes drugs and other age-related diseases, researchers at US drug maker Sirtris Pharmaceuticals said.

"The excitement here is that we’re not talking about red wine anymore. We’re talking about real drugs," said David Sinclair, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and a co-founder of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sirtris.

"This is the first time that real drugs have been designed to go after diseases through the genes that control aging," said Sinclair, whose research appears in the journal Nature.

"One of the drawbacks of resveratrol is the doses need to be large. Now this paper says you can reduce it into a little pill taken once a day," he said in a telephone interview.

Sinclair and researchers at Sirtris have been looking for drug compounds that mimic the effects of resveratrol, the chemical in red wine that has been shown in several studies to prolong the life of mice and reduce the advance of age-related disease.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Heart Foundation

Your heart needs care for life. A healthy heart is about enjoying a healthy lifestyle and making this a part of your everyday life. It is also about taking positive steps to reduce risk factors.

Everyone can do something to help prevent heart disease, including people who already have heart disease or who have had a heart event. The good news is that if you lead a healthy lifestyle, as outlined below, you can reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

The best ways to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, and to help prevent it getting worse if it already exists is to reduce or remove the risk factors over which we have some control.

To do this, have ongoing heart disease risk assessments with your doctor and lead a healthy lifestyle as outlined below. Being male, increasing age and having a family history of early death from heart disease are also risk factors for developing heart disease, but are much more difficult to control or change!

1. Be smokefree

Smoking reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood and damages the artery walls. Stopping smoking is the single most important thing you can do to reduce your risk of coronary heart disease. For more information on quitting smoking, call the Quitline on 131 848.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: WHO

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin, or alternatively, when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar.

Hyperglycaemia, or raised blood sugar, is a common effect of uncontrolled diabetes and over time leads to serious damage to many of the body’s systems, especially the nerves and blood vessels.

Read the rest of this entry »