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The physical changes just seem to creep up on us. With each year's passing, we add a few pounds, we exercise a little less, we become physically more lethargic, until finally one day we wake up to the realization that we're thirty or forty pounds overweight and spending more time at the computer or in front of the television set than walking or being active.

Evolution Doesn't Happen Overnight

Our bodies are not made for either our typical American diet or being sedentary. Our ancestors, from whom we inherited our bodies and our genes, ate mostly vegetables, fruits, nuts, fish and lean meats and burnt enough calories gathering and hunting for them to have lean and muscular bodies. Only in contemporary times – the last three decades -- have human beings feasted on fast food and sugary desserts and lived an inactive lifestyle. Thus there is a huge gulf between how our bodies are programmed to function and the environment in which they live and what they actually experience.

Greater Risk After 40

This disconnect makes us prone to all kinds of diseases—the primary one being diabetes. It is estimated that now more than 41 million Americans have pre-diabetes. This is a condition that some doctors describe as "glucose intolerance" or impaired fasting glucose" and is diagnosed via a fasting blood glucose level or with an oral glucose tolerance test. Measuring glucose levels is something that everyone who is over 40, slightly or dramatically overweight or who has a relative with diabetes
needs to do. Why? Because every year ten percent of this group will develop diabetes, whether they are aware of having had the precursor to diabetes or not.

Diabetes Is a Challenging Disease

There is a growing epidemic of diabetes in the United States and once a person develops it, he or she faces a range of debilitating conditions of the disease that include blindness, kidney failure, neuropathy that leads to amputation and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. But there are now studies that show that diabetes can be prevented if there are certain lifestyle changes made before it develops.

Hope for Those Who Help Themselves

The single most important study every conducted in diabetes prevention took place in the mid-1990s with over 3,000 pre-diabetic and overweight individuals participating from 27 medical centers from across the United States. The results of the three year study showed that those who had made lifestyle changes like eating less fat and fewer calories and exercising for a total of at least two and a half hours per week not only lost on average over 12 pounds but that fewer of them developed diabetes compared to those in the control groups who took medication or placebos.

Just as importantly your chances of developing complications associated with diabetes like cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high levels of triglycerides are also reduced by improving lifestyle. Did you know that those with diabetes are three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who don't have it? Did you know that most people with diabetes die from complications of cardiovascular disease than the direct result of having diabetes?

A Tipping Point

As a former president of the American Diabetes Association, I know all too well about the growing epidemic of diabetes in the United States. I'm saddened at how many Americans unwittingly go about living their lives in ways that almost guarantee they will develop diabetes -- especially as they age. Many in our generation are at a tipping point with regards to lifestyle and the risk of diabetes; we have an opportunity to either take the bull by the horns or let it pass us by. I invite you to come back to ReZoom.com over the next few weeks to learn more about diabetes and how this silent epidemic can be stopped in its tracks one individual at a time. Come back to find out if you're at risk. Come back to find out how our modern lifestyle is literally killing us. Join me and the folks at ReZoom to lead the way for changing the future for thousands of middle aged Americans.

See part two of this diabetes series: The Cavemen Knew Better.