A healthy lifestyle can contribute to fewer Type 2 diabetes complications

Microvascular complications of diabetes are those long-term complications that affect small blood vessels. These typically include diabetic retinopathy, diabetic kidney disease, and diabetic neuropathy.

The current study examined whether various lifestyle behaviors such as non-smoking, normal body weight, physical activity, a healthy diet, and moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages could jointly affect these long-term complications of type 2 diabetics, and whether metabolic biomarkers (blood sugar control, systemic inflammation, blood lipids and liver function) could be improved.

The results of this research with data from the UK Biobank study showed that type 2 diabetic patients adhering to a greater number of lifestyle habits had significantly less of these diabetic microvascular complications and suggested that 25% of these microvascular complications could have been avoided, if the type 2 diabetic patients had 4 or more healthy lifestyle behaviors. In addition, these favorable changes were mediated through improving the biomarkers of blood glucose control, inflammation, blood lipids and liver function.