In England, the National Health Service UK (NHS) has recently launched a diabetes prevention programme to identify and treat all people with pre-diabetic health conditions and elevated blood sugar levels, following the publication of the latest statistics on type 2 diabetes. Two million people in the UK are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. For Germany, too, such government measures are conceivable in order to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, which are also associated with elevated blood sugar levels. This is because England is expecting 39,000 heart attack cases and 50,000 stroke patients in 2035, which will cause enormous damage to the healthcare system, as one in six hospital beds is already a diabetic bed. A healthier lifestyle with the reduction of overweight should drastically reduce the consequences and minimise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a statement by the British health authority NHS. The prevention programme will then consist of a three-month supervised dietary phase with 800 kilocalories in the form of liquid food per day. This is followed by nine months of reorientation for the 5,000 participants in the program, in terms of building a new diet and lifestyle with the maintenance of the new weight, because weight reduction alone can control type 2 diabetes if followed by maintenance measures. Most people, however, are not even aware that they suffer from so-called diabetes in the early stages. It is only as this disease of affluence progresses that they realise that something is wrong. Warning signals should therefore not be ignored so that early intervention can be made. Warning signals include frequent visits to the toilet, especially at night, urinary tract and yeast infections caused by too much sugar in the urine, overweight and obesity, especially in the abdomen, deterioration of vision, fatigue and exhaustion, and skin discolouration, mainly in the neck and ankles.
