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Weight
Loss Impact on
Diabetes to Be
Studied
Excerpt By
Nancy
A. Melville, HealthScoutNews Reporter
(HealthScoutNews)
-- What's the most effective way for people with Type II diabetes
to lose weight, and how does that weight loss help them?
Those are
the questions researchers hope to answer at the end of an ambitious,
11-year study that will examine the effects of weight loss on
people with Type II, or adult-onset, diabetes.
With a budget
of $180 million, the study, to be known as Look AHEAD (Action
for Health in Diabetes), is the largest project of its kind ever
funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Participants
will include 5,000 volunteers recruited by 16 centers around the
country.
About 90 percent
of all people who are newly diagnosed Type II diabetics are overweight.
Obesity increases "insulin resistance and contributes to
many health problems, including heart and blood vessel disease,"
according to the American Diabetes Association.
"And
when obese people with Type II diabetes lose weight, they often
experience a lowering of their blood glucose levels and are then
able to decrease their insulin or oral diabetes medications,"
the ADA adds.
Mark A. Espeland,
a professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest University
School of Medicine, says the study's participants will be randomly
divided into two control groups -- one receiving close weight-loss
instruction and monitoring, and the other attending only occasional
educational sessions.
"One
group will be attending weekly sessions in which they'll talk
about diet and exercise, and, if appropriate, they'll be put on
liquid meal supplements or portion-control diets. Counselors will
work closely with them to see what can be done about weight loss,"
Espeland says.
"The
second group will attend just three or four sessions a year that
will provide some background on diabetes management, including
advice about how important it is to lose weight if you're overweight,"
he adds. "They will also be given information about managing
the symptoms of Type II diabetes, but we're actually not expecting
too much weight loss in that group overall."
Wake Forest
University will be the national coordinating center for the study
but is not one of the participating volunteer centers.
Espeland says
the length of the study is necessary in order to assess long-term
effects of managing the disease.
"The
reason we need such a long period of time is that problems related
to diabetes, such as heart attacks and stroke, accrue fairly slowly.
We need to have enough information on these outcomes, and it takes
time to get that information," he says.
Study participants
will be people between the ages of 45 and 75 who have Type II
diabetes and who are overweight, which will be determined using
a formula known as the body mass index (BMI).
People with
a BMI over 25 qualify for the study. So, for example, a 5-foot-4-inch
woman who weighs 150 pounds would qualify, as would a 6-foot man
who weighs 190 pounds. The goal for the participants will be to
lose 10 percent of their initial weight and then keep it off.
Dr. Xavier
Pi-Sunyer, chief of the endocrinology division at St. Luke's Roosevelt
Hospital in New York City, says losing weight can be even more
of a challenge for people with diabetes than for those who don't
have the disease.
"For
reasons that are unknown, people with diabetes tend to have a
more difficult time losing weight and keeping it off, so that's
a problem," he says.
The incentive
for losing weight is that doing so improves the symptoms of diabetes,
Pi-Sunyer says.
"For
most people it doesn't reverse with weight loss, but the diabetes
does gets better. The blood sugars get lower and it's not as serious,"
he says.
What To
Do: Visit the American Diabetes Association for information
on
healthy living for diabetics. And you can look up your own
body mass index at the
Body Fat Lab.
Reference
Source 101
For
more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick
Prevention Resources".
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