Prevent Diabetes Mellitus with 6 Healthy Steps

Diabetes mellitus or diabetes is a non-communicable disease that must receive special attention. This disease is the third leading cause of death in Indonesia after stroke and heart disease. The number of people with diabetes in Indonesia continues to increase from 10.7 million in 2019 to 19.5 million in 2021. Indonesia is ranked fifth with the largest number of diabetics in the world,

 

Diabetes is a disease that occurs when insulin is not produced or does not work properly, causing sugar to build up in our blood. Seeing these conditions, implementing a healthy lifestyle is the key that can minimize someone getting diabetes, both at a young age and in old age. This disease cannot be cured but can be controlled so that complications do not occur.

 

6 Healthy Steps to Prevent Diabetes

The following are 6 healthy steps that can prevent someone from suffering from diabetes mellitus, including:

 

1.     Quit smoking

Smoking is an activity that is not only unhealthy for the lungs, but can also cause a person to develop diabetes mellitus. For this reason, avoid the use of tobacco (cigarettes and chewing tobacco) and stop consuming alcoholic beverages.

 

2.     Maintaining Ideal Body Weight

Regulate a diet with balanced nutrition to maintain an ideal body weight. Reduce consumption of carbohydrates and increase food rich in fiber.

 

3.     Doing Physical Activity

Light physical activity such as walking, climbing stairs, and doing aerobics has also been shown to be able to reduce sugar levels in the body, so that the body becomes healthy, has an ideal body weight, and at the same time minimizes someone suffering from diabetes mellitus.

 

4.     Consuming Healthy Food

One of the efforts to prevent diabetes mellitus is to consume healthy food to get nutrition. Consume 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables, and reduce your intake of sugar, salt and saturated fat.

 

5.     Regularly Check Blood Sugar

Checking blood sugar or HbA1c regularly is one way to detect as early as possible the blood sugar content in the body, so that if someone is exposed to diabetes, they will get treatment faster.

 

6.     Managing stress

Stress is one of the causes of diabetes that may be rarely known by the public. The reason is when the body is under stress, the production of serotonin will be disrupted, causing the body's ability to create insulin will be reduced.

 

Better to prevent than cure. Let's be disciplined in implementing clean and healthy living habits, and check at health facilities if you experience symptoms of diabetes mellitus such as urinating more than usual, especially at night, losing weight without doing anything, to wounds that never heal.