Ed Chandler, 53, a commercial mortgage banker in Indianapolis, has always been competitive and athletic. "I always had a life philosophy of developing my mind and body at the same time," he says.

But a couple of years ago, he got some news that nearly knocked him off his game. He found out that, like 54 million Americans, he was heading for type 2 diabetes. He has "pre-diabetes," a condition in which his blood sugar levels were higher than normal, but not quite high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.

Chandler, whose grandfather had diabetes and whose father, 80, developed it in his 60s, is not about to sit around and let it happen to him.

He is taking part in an Indiana University pilot program — being tested at five YMCAs in Indianapolis — aimed at preventing or delaying diabetes in people with pre-diabetes.

Once he got with the program, he says, "I started getting more exercise and started feeling better. I chose to rebalance my life."

He has always been active. "I'm one of those baby boomers in the running generation," he says, and as he got older, he added bicycling to his activities.

But he likes to eat, too, and over the years, he got up to about 235 pounds on his 5-foot, 11-inch frame. "It was just a function of me not paying attention to what I was doing," he says. "Men tend to go out and eat and drink too much. You're in the business world. You've got to have steak and drink beer and have scotches and martinis."

Turning lifestyle around

Now, he's focused. "Some people who are pre-diabetic don't realize what they're doing, and my habits were not good for me. So, for the last two years, I haven't eaten much red meat, I don't go to fast-food restaurants except to get coffee, I don't eat fried foods too much, I eat a lot of chicken and fish and write down every day what I eat. That's the best way: Write it down and don't cheat. If you cheat, you're cheating yourself out of the last five or six years of your life."

The program is a series of 16-week classes for groups of 10-12 people, who put into action the lessons learned in a large study called the Diabetes Prevention Program, or DPP. Published in 2002, the DPP found people who have pre-diabetes can reduce their risk of developing the disease by as much as 58 percent if they lose 5 percent to 10 percent of their body weight and exercise about half an hour a day.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

Add Comment