You may already be suffering from one of the most common - and often overlooked modern lifestyle diseases. It's a disease, surprisingly enough, caused by your body's inability to make the most of the food you eat. Its name is insulin resistance and it is the chief characteristic of adult-onset diabetes that will strike one in three of us during our lifetime.



It is also known as metabolic syndrome or syndrome x and it sets the stage for obesity and heart disease even if you are not diabetic. Up to 50% of people with this condition do not even know they have it and they could well have their life shortened by 15 years if it is not addressed.

You may feel these symptoms: Feeling tired and listless and lacking motivation to be active. Gaining a pound here and a pound there - and having difficulty losing them. That weight could also have settled around the abdominal area so you are now an apple shape. And possibly if you are an older person your blood pressure and cholesterol may be creeping upwards year after year.

Diabetes is a nasty disease which affects an estimated 246 million people worldwide and each year a further 7 million people join the ranks. What can you do about it? The simple prescription is to get started on a proper exercise program and eat right because each reduces insulin resistance.

Health professionals have known about insulin resistance for decades, but only in the 10 years have they gained a better understanding of exactly how it derails your health. It is caused by the over-consumption of refined carbohydrates, such as breads, pastas, and sugary foods and drinks.

Normally, after you eat a meal, your body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, or blood sugar which prompts the release of insulin. This is a hormone that helps transport glucose from the blood to the cells especially muscle cells where it is burned for energy or stored if you are not active.

When a person eats a lot of refined carbohydrates year after year, even decade after decade a dangerous cascade occurs. Insulin levels remain chronically high, and cells become less responsive - and resistant - to insulin. As a consequence, relatively little glucose gets burned and levels remain high eventually evolving into diabetes.

The consequences of high blood glucose may take years to become apparent. Complications are typically the result of changes to the vascular system (arteries, veins, etc) that result in damage that cannot be repaired. Many years of high glucose levels induce changes to the vessel walls that restrict blood flow to some especially sensitive tissues, such as the brain, heart, eyes, the nervous system, and the kidneys. As a result, these tissues and organs may become poorly nourished by the bloodstream and start to die.

Up to 80% of this problem can be prevented by a proper exercise program that contains a large percentage of strength training exercise supported by a proper eating plan. It is important that there is enough energy supplied by the food to put some effort into the exercise program and help keep motivation levels high.

To prevent diabetes the most important things are to keep blood sugar levels under control and improve the body's cells sensitivity to insulin. Strength training exercise does both of these things better than any other form of exercise.

How?

1. By building more toned muscle, this is the primary tissue that takes up blood sugar and clears away as much as 90%. So the more muscle tissue you have the more sugar you can clear from the blood.

2. By increasing the amount of blood flow to your muscles, which allows more glucose to be delivered to the highly active tissues that can burn it up.

3. By increasing insulin sensitivity with toned muscle cells becoming more responsive to the effects of insulin. This allows blood sugar to be cleared with lower levels of insulin.

4. By decreasing levels of abdominal fat which increases insulin resistance and causes many other health risks.

Get started right away with your exercise program with the help of a fitness professional to make sure you don't become one of those frightening statistics that end up with diabetes.

If you pay attention to some of the early warning signs of insulin resistance such as even becoming slightly overweight in your 30's and 40's you stand a good chance of preventing diabetes and all the complications of it when you are older.