Regular physical exercise can lead to massive reductions in type-2 diabetes risk according to a number of scientific studies.

One of the largest studies on the impact of exercise on type-2 diabetes risk was conducted in 1992 by researchers from the Department of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. The researchers used data from the Physicians’ Health Study which involved 21,2171 male physicians from the United States aged between 40 and 84 who were followed for five years.

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A Mediterranean style diet that is high in fruit, nuts, legumes, and whole grains may reduce an individuals risk of developing type-2 diabetes by more than 80% according to new research published in May this year.

The study, conducted by Spanish researchers and published in the British Medical Journal, followed 13,380 Spanish university graduates for an average of 4.4 years. The graduates adherence to a Mediterranean diet was calculated by giving each participant a score of zero or one for their consumption of nine components of a Mediterranean diet.

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Evidence from several large studies suggests that vegetarians may be more than 50% less likely to develop type-2 diabetes compared to those who consume meat on a regular basis.

One of the largest studies on the link between a vegetarian diet and diabetes came from a study of 25,698 seventh day adventists in 1960 over a 21 year study period. The study was published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1985.

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People who consume nuts at least five times a week may be almost half as likely to develop type-2 diabetes as infrequent nut eaters according to the results of a recent study.

The study was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in November 2002 by American researchers at the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. The authors analyzed data on 83,818 women which was collected from the Nurses Health Study (NHS) over a 16 year period from 1980 to 1996.

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Those who do not get between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night are between 2 and 3 times more likely to develop type-2 diabetes according to a recent study published in the journal Diabetes Care in March 2006.

The study, conducted by American researchers involved a group of 1,709 men from Boston, Massachusetts aged between 40 and 75. The participants were followed over an average of 15 years during which 90 cases of type-2 diabetes were diagnosed.

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A recent study has found that eating dairy products such as cheese, milk, butter, and yogurt can reduce an individuals risk of developing type-2 diabetes by as much as 31%. The study, published in the journal Diabetes Care in 2006, involved following 37,183 healthy middle-aged women for an average of 10 years. The women were asked to complete questionnaires on how frequently they consumed 130 common food products.

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Consumption of coffee may be associated with a reduction in type-2 diabetes risk according to a study published in the June 2006 edition of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The researchers used data from the Iowa Women’s Health Study which was conducted between 1986 and 1997 and involved 28,812 post menopausal women.

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Regular red and processed meat consumption of more than 5 servings a week is a significant risk factor for the development of type-2 diabetes according to several research studies.

One of the largest studies on the link between meat consumption and diabetes risk was published in the journal Diabetes Care in 2004. It involved the study of 37,309 initially healthy women aged over 45 who completed a food questionnaire in 1993 and were then followed for an average of 8.8 years.

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Those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 35 are almost ten times more likely to develop diabetes in their lifetimes than those with a normal BMI (18.5-24.9) according to a study published in the journal Diabetes Care in 2007.

The study involved analyzing data from the US National Health Interview Survey and involved more than 200,000 American participants aged between 18-84. Overall 15,843 (6.5%) of the study participants had been diagnosed with diabetes.

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Fresh fruit and green leafy vegetables such as spinach, silver-beet, and lettuce reduce the risk of developing type-2 diabetes according to a new study published in the journal Diabetes Care. The same study also found that drinking large amounts of fruit juice may increase diabetes risk.

The researchers analyzed data from 71,346 healthy female nurses between the ages of 38 and 63 over an 18 year period between 1984 and 2002. Over the study period, 4,529 new cases of type-2 diabetes were diagnosed.

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A 12-year study on the effects of alcohol on diabetes has found that consumption of alcohol may reduce the risk of developing type-2 diabetes by more than a third. The reduction in diabetes risk was apparent even at relatively high levels of alcohol consumption (more than 28 standard drinks a week).

The researchers used data from 46,892 male health professionals who were sent questionnaires every two years for the 12 year study period.

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Diabetes sufferers are just as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as those who have already survived a heart attack according to a recent Danish study published in the journal Circulation.

The study of 3.3 million residents of Denmark over the age of 30 was conducted between 1997 and 2002. 71,801 of those studied had been diagnosed with either type-1 or type-2 diabetes while a further 79,575 had suffered a prior heart attack.

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Infants who do not receive enough Vitamin D are more likely to develop type-1 diabetes in later life according to researchers who analyzed the findings of five previous studies.

The study, which appears in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, found that across the five studies, vitamin D supplementation resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the probability of developing type-1 diabetes later in life.

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Breastfed babies are less likely to develop diabetes later in life compared to babies who are formula fed according to recent evidence.

In one study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and led by Christopher G. Owen of St George’s University in London, data was analyzed from seven studies that had previously examined the impact of breast feeding on diabetes risk.

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A new study, presented in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, has found that elderly people with either diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance (a precursor to diabetes) , dramatically improved their sensitivity to insulin after just one week of light aerobic exercise.

The research, conducted at the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan, involved 12 elderly people with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) performing an hour of supervised aerobic exercise for a period of 7 days.

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Scientists at a biotechnology company called Novocell have reported a break through in the treatment of diabetes by using stem cell therapy to create insulin producing cells that were injected into mice.

The study, which were published online by the journal Nature Biotechnology, reported that researchers had  produced insulin secreting cells through a complicated process that involved first turning the stem cells into endoderm cells in the lab.

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