Treat diabetes with food and healthy lifestyle — Kyiamah

An industrialist, Dr Kaku Kyiamah, has expressed worry over the high rate of diabetes cases being recorded in the country and recommended the use of food and change in lifestyle to manage the condition.

He noted that the body was capable of repairing itself using fatty acids as a major component of the diet.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview, Dr Kyiamah explained that  the body would help repair damaged mitochondrial matrices if people consumed only foods containing the fatty acids which the body produced naturally, mentioning fruit cider vinegar, fermented food items, fruits, organic butter, tropical saturated fats, animal fat, olive oil, as well as virgin coconut oil which had been found to be effective in managing diabetes

Diabetes increasing

He said there were about four million diabetics in Ghana, while records from the Health Statistics Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) indicated that from 2005 to 2009 the annual cases of diabetes increased from about 40,000 to about 104,000.

“Diabetes, according to the World Health Organisation, is said to be one of the rising killer diseases globally, claiming one life every eight seconds and a limb lost at every 30 seconds, but a healthy diet habit can also be adopted to reduce the high incidence rate,” he said.

Diabetes is caused by the failure of the “power-house” of the cell to use glucose to produce energy.  The “power-house” is known as the mitochondrial matrix.

People with diabetes fail to convert most of the glucose into energy. Therefore, glucose builds up in the blood and passes out of the body as part of the urine.

Diabetes can cause serious health complications, including heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and lower-extremity amputations.

In Ghana, about four million people may be affected with diabetes mellitus, which is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, a condition which could be attributed to a situation where either the body does not produce enough insulin or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced.

Diabetes mellitus can be controlled and managed with little injections of insulin.

Types of diabetes

Type 1 diabetes, previously called insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) or juvenile-onset diabetes, may account for between five and 10 per cent of all diagnosed cases of diabetes.

Risk factors are less well defined for Type 1 diabetes than for Type 2 diabetes, but auto-immune, genetic and environmental factors are involved in the development of this type of diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes was previously called non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or adult-onset diabetes. It may account for about 90 to 95 per cent of all diagnosed cases of diabetes.

Risk factors for Type 2 diabetes include old age, obesity, family history of diabetes, prior history of gestational diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, physical inactivity and race/ethnicity.

Dr Kyiamah noted that diet played an important role in the onset of diabetes. Lifestyle changes such as regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, high fiber diet, low fat intake and reduction in carbohydrates are encouraged.

“Various supplements, mainly antioxidants, are recommended.  The role of antioxidants is to prevent the oxidation of poly unsaturated fatty acids and alcohol. Antioxidants will not be necessary if the body’s preferred fatty acids are used,” he added.