Change in lifestyle best treatment for diabetes, says physician

The best treatment for diabetes is to change one’s life style especially as one gets older, Dr Ndubuisi Onuoha, a senior consultant physician and pulmonologist in Abuja has said. “There is a way you will live and would not have diabetes even if your parents have it.  “Diabetes is not caused by taking a lot […]

The best treatment for diabetes is to change one’s life style especially as one gets older, Dr Ndubuisi Onuoha, a senior consultant physician and pulmonologist in Abuja has said.
“There is a way you will live and would not have diabetes even if your parents have it.
 “Diabetes is not caused by taking a lot of carbohydrates. In Nigeria, We have always been eating mainly carbohydrates, and were not having diabetes or cancer and the newly introduced diseases,”he said.
He stated that the body was created to function mainly on carbohydrate, explaining that the cheapest source of energy is carbohydrate followed by fat and oil.
 “So, by the time you are using protein to replace energy, you are starving,” he said.
While decrying treatments where patients are told not to eat carbohydrates but plenty of protein, he said using protein for energy is an expensive venture because the body is an economist and would rather go for the cheapest form of food supplement.
Dr Onouha said one of the solutions is to go back to the ancient method where foods were eaten in their raw forms and whole state rather than the processed or refined form.
He said taking fruit on empty stomach helps the food that comes thereafter to digest faster and not the other way round.
 “When you take food then fruits thereafter, it is expensive for the body to digest cooked food. That way, the bacteria will act on it to form gas and that is what causes indigestion. It is advisable to eat fruits in empty stomach and allow digestion before you eat food on it,” he said.