Diabetic how long can you live

To that end, a diabetes diagnosis can be the first step to managing or reversing more life-threatening conditions, potentially leading to a longer life. You should be eating well and exercising anyway. Munshi says. For some people, these measures can have incredible benefits: A report published in September in the British Medical Journal suggested maintaining a healthy weight and lowering blood glucose levels may even help reverse type 2 diabetes. As always, the most important step a person living with diabetes can take to improve the quality of their life — and potentially extend it — is to speak up for themselves to get the quality of social and medical support they need.

A review published in November in the journal Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity suggested that support from friends and family can help you adhere to your diabetes management plan.

Due to a constant stream of new research and medical advances, people with diabetes have good reason to be optimistic about the future. For example, new research is pointing to inflammation as a cause of type 2 diabetes , and multiple clinical studies are underway to explore medication to reduce the incidence of the condition.

So, preventing kidney disease is important in maintaining longevity. Interestingly, in a Swedish database, people with diabetes who were 65 year of age or older, had an A1C less than 7. This was thought to be because they were taking heart-protective medications such as cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure pills. The United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study Outcomes Model is a computer program that predicts the likelihood of serious diabetes-related complications, and death, in people living with type 2 diabetes.

For example, if you are a year-old man who has been living with type 2 diabetes for the past five years, your life expectancy is predicted to be as follows:. The effect of diabetes on life expectancy also depends on how old you are when you are diagnosed with the disease. The younger you are, the longer you will live with the disease and the more likely it will shorten your life expectancy. So, if you are at risk for diabetes because you have risk factors , such as having a family history of type 2 diabetes or coming from a high-risk population e.

South Asian, Indigenous , or if you have prediabetes , it makes sense to delay the onset of diabetes by reducing the risk factors under your control. This can be done by adopting health behaviours such as eating well, attaining your ideal weight, not smoking and getting regular exercise. In some case of prediabetes, your doctor may suggest medication metformin to delay the onset of diabetes.

Simple tips to make your pizza healthier - Diabetes Care Community. Sign up for our newsletter! The findings indicate that a drug known as metformin, used to control glucose levels in the body and already known to exhibit anticancer properties, could offer prognostic and prophylactic benefits to people without diabetes. Published in a leading diabetes journal, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism by scientists from Cardiff University, the study set out to compare the survival of diabetes patients prescribed with metformin with patients prescribed with another common diabetes drug called sulphonylurea.

Importantly, the life expectancy of these cohorts was also compared against non-diabetics who were matched based on criteria that included age, gender, same general practice, smoking status and clinical status. This was true even without any clever statistical manipulation.

Metformin has been shown to have anti-cancer and anti-cardiovascular disease benefits. It can also reduce pre-diabetics' chances of developing the disease by a third. Their disease will progress and they will be typically switched to more aggressive treatments. People lose on average around eight years from their life expectancy after developing diabetes.

The best way to avoid the condition altogether is by keeping moderately lean and taking some regular light exercise. In the next phase of the research, Professor Currie plans to investigate how patients prescribed with metformin as a first line therapy can best be treated thereafter to ensure that their life expectancy can be brought closer in line with the national average. Effective glucose control in diabetics is important in reducing the risk of microvascular complications such as stroke or coronary artery disease.

The stymying of these conditions can initially be achieved through diet and exercise, but glucose lowering medication is required in most patients with progressing diabetes.

Metformin is recommended as first line therapy for type 2 diabetes in the current American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the study of diabetes guidelines. Sulphonylureas are commonly prescribed if metformin is deemed by practitioners to be an unsuitable course for treatment.