KARACHI: Instead of taking life-long medicines or insulin for sugar control, ‘Diabetes Remission’ can be achieved by sticking to six pillars of Lifestyle Medicine (LM) which include healthy nutrition, regular physical activity, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, restorative sleep, and social connections, experts said on Sunday.
“People can achieve diabetes remission which means they can get rid of the taking daily medication or even insulin by adopting lifestyle medicine.
All they have to do is take healthy unprocessed diet, exercise regularly on daily basis, managing stress, avoiding addiction, restorative sleep and having strong social connections”, said Dr Munira Abbasi, an expert on lifestyle medicine while addressing a workshop on diabetes remission in Karachi.
The workshop titled ‘Diabetes Remission through Lifestyle Modification’ was held under Discovering Diabetes Project in collaboration with local firm PharmEvo and it was attended senior and mid-career healthcare professionals, endocrinologists and medical graduates here at a local hotel in Karachi.
The health professionals from all over the country who were here to attend the workshop organised by Discovering Diabetes - a project of PharmEvo to spread awareness regarding diabetes in the country — were convinced that the lifestyle medicines have opened new avenues of treatment of the diabetes and removed several myths which were attached with the disease.
The workshop led to the conclusion that diabetes is preventable by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Dr Abbasi, with triple board certification in internal medicine, endocrinology and lifestyle medicine, shared her journey that how she came to this achievement after practicing more than seven years in the United States in the beginning of her professional career and then spending a number of years in the profession back home in Pakistan.
“I always found myself unsatisfied with the feedback of patients when I saw them complaining about their health conditions which were not improving despite treatment,” she said. “So being a doctor, we always found a solace assuming that we’re trying our best and it’s the patient who doesn’t want to improve. But finally I realised that it’s not the case. We, as doctors, need to improve to make patients realize that he or she should also make his or her contribution to improve their health conditions. And here comes the lifestyle medicine.”
She referred to the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, which include plant-based nutrition, physical activity, and stress management, avoidance of risky substances, restorative sleep and social connections. Regarding social connections, she said, the people including healthcare professionals realized the importance of this factor more during Covid-19 pandemic when the social distancing was imposed by the authorities.
“The impact of social connection was most prominently established and published in Grant Study, which is a research conducted by Harvard University spanning over 80 years of time and one of the world’s longest studies of adult life,” said Dr Abbasi. “Of the original Harvard cohort recruited as part of the Grant Study, only 19 are still alive, all in their mid-90s.
Among the original recruits included former US president John F. Kennedy. The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. The study has proved that embracing community helps us live longer and be happier.”
Renowned diabetologist Prof Dr Abdul Basit also addressed the workshop saying there were over 33 million diabetics in Pakistan, many of whom were not even diagnosed while scores of them were living without controlled diabetes, and advised people to improve their lifestyle to prevent and control their disease.
“Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease and the best option is to prevent a person from becoming diabetic; even if a person becomes diabetic, he or she can live a normal life by adopting lifestyle medicine”, he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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