If you find out you have type 2 diabetes, you may be afraid of dying earlier than most people. You may be wondering, “can you grow old with type 2 diabetes?” or “what is Life Expectancy In Type 2 Diabetes”.

Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to prevent this.

In this article, I’ll give you the facts about life expectancy in type 2 diabetes. But I’ll also tell you exactly what you need to do to prevent this.

Your life expectancy with type 2 diabetes

It is not a very pleasant subject but it is very important.

Diabetes does not have a pleasant outlook. Maybe you know someone close to you who has it and you have seen with your own eyes the damage it has done to that person. Or do you have diabetes yourself and want to take all precautions to stay healthy as long as possible.

Before I tell you what you can do to stay as healthy as possible, it’s important to give you information about the life expectancy of people with diabetes. Once you understand what people with diabetes go through, it is a lot easier to make choices about how you want to deal with your disease.

I want to say in advance that this is not the most cheerful article on this site. But it is important. Especially because as a diabetes patient you have the opportunity to influence the course of your disease.

#1: Your life expectancy with type 2 diabetes drops by about 10 years

I think it’s important to give you the summary first. And that is that if you get diabetes at a relatively old age, your life expectancy decreases by about 10 years.

That is quite something. Because suppose you had turned 75 without diabetes. Then you will only be 65. That makes a big difference.

In the rest of this article I will explain how this average can differ. Because not everyone will live ten years shorter. There are situations where you can reduce this difference. And unhealthy behavior can further deteriorate your health, with all the consequences that entails.

How do scientists arrive at the average life expectancy?

That’s very simple. They maintain contacts with doctors who treat people with diabetes. The doctors tell the researchers how their patients are doing.

By doing this for a long time, you can keep track of who gets complaints and who stays healthy. And you find out who dies and who lives. In this way, researchers know exactly what the situation is with regard to life expectancy and diabetes.

There are differences (with regard to life expectancy in diabetes) between these types of studies. The main study from England talks about an average of ten years.

But in a US study, life expectancy fell by just 8.5 years.

That is a difference of one and a half years.

But despite that difference, it becomes clear every time that diabetics live shorter lives. And the unhealthier they live, the shorter their lives will be.

#2: Complications further reduce your life expectancy in diabetes

Suppose you have old age diabetes. The doctor told you a few weeks ago and now that the initial shock has passed you have two choices:

• Stop your diabetes by following my tips
• Continue to live on the old foot and get more complaints

If you choose the latter, you will eventually have problems with your body that are not for the cat. The more complications you have and the more severe they are, the further your life expectancy will drop.

And all because your blood sugar is constantly too high and your body can’t handle it.

In my article on 10 Consequences of type 2 diabetes that causes your body to decline fast, you get a comprehensive but depressing overview of what to expect if you can’t get your blood sugar under control.

Click to Watch this simple video on: How to Cure/ Manage Diabetes Without Drugs

A highly recommended article.

All these complaints arise because your organs and tissues cannot withstand a raised blood sugar. By keeping this low you can prevent the following:

• Diabetic foot: this can even lead to your foot having to be amputated
• Damage to your nerves: nerve pain
• Damage to your kidneys: incontinence, the ability to filter your blood
• Blindness: your retina gets a knock due to an increased blood sugar

This is just a brief overview. For more information about symptoms of type 2 diabetes, read this article.

#3: These are the most common deaths

Cardiovascular disease is number one. Elevated blood sugar increases the risk of heart problems. Because your blood vessels can’t handle a surplus of sugar in your blood. That’s why they break.

Combine this with the fact that most people with diabetes have elevated blood pressure and cholesterol.

Their risk of heart problems is already increased.

And if their blood vessels also get damaged, that’s an extra factor.

After cardiovascular disease, people often die from problems with their kidneys or a brain haemorrhage. Both are again partly caused by elevated blood sugars.

#4: Your quality of life isn’t getting any better

This is an understatement.

Imagine that you become very visually impaired or blind. Whether you constantly have to go to the hospital because your kidneys are broken. And a foot has to be taken off because your elevated blood sugar is destroying your legs.

Let’s say you’re lucky and your life expectancy doesn’t drop as sharply as average. You live as long as a normal person, but you have to go through life with the above complaints. That is not a pleasant prospect.

I’m not saying this to scare you or to criticize you. I want to make you aware of the consequences if you don’t take action. Because maybe you’ll be lucky and live as long as someone without diabetes…

…but if your blood sugar is continuously elevated, you will get the symptoms I described above.

And in addition, due to old age you can also suffer from other complaints that can make your life less pleasant.

#5: Heart Problems and Other Ailments Make It Worse

As I have already explained to you, the leading cause of death for people with diabetes is heart problems. If you have diabetes and other variables that increase the risk of heart problems, that chance only increases.

Diabetes is a disease that affects your entire body. High blood sugar can damage your entire body. The weakest link will give up first. If other things are not in order with you, the chance increases that you will suffer from this.

For one, these are problems at the heart. With the other, his eyes are the first to give up. You will not only have to do something about your diabetes but also have to look at other weak spots in your body.

It is important to have a good discussion about this with your doctor. And to see what you can do yourself.

The important thing is this:

#6: Control your blood sugar

Once you have been diagnosed, as I said, you have two choices:

• You take action and minimize the chance that you will die prematurely
• You keep doing what you’re doing and try to ignore the shortened life expectancy in type 2 diabetes

Every slight increase in your blood sugar level causes damage to your body, no matter how short this increase lasts. But if you decide to keep your blood sugar low all the time, your body can slowly recover from this.

So keeping your blood sugar low should be your number one priority if you have diabetes. Here you will find in brief the most important tips to get this done:

• Choose a diet to cure diabetes: use my tips for this. Little to no sugar, lots of vegetables and energy-rich foods will help you feel better than ever before
• Move as much as you can: you don’t have to be a top athlete, but you can’t get away with living as a couch potato either. Take walks and work up to a fortnightly visit to the gym. In addition, find other physical activities that you enjoy doing
• Keep your stress low: The more stress, the greater the chance that you will stop exercising and eating healthy. And tension in itself isn’t good when you’re sick, either. Because it’s bad for your blood sugar

#7: You can make some changes no matter how old you are

What’s hopeful is that no matter how old you are, you can do something to increase your life expectancy if you have diabetes. Even old people who have neglected their bodies all their lives can improve their quality of life by taking action now.

Because if you stick to my tips long enough, your situation will improve. Once your blood sugar is healthy, your body can begin to repair itself.

This is nicely illustrated by an important study comparing life expectancy between people who take action and people who do nothing:

• A patient who smokes and has too high (but not extremely elevated) blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol averages 68
• A patient who has all this much better under control and who does not smoke but who has not completely reversed his diabetes averages 76

Suppose you get diabetes at the age of 50 and you intervene immediately.

You go beyond the relatively healthy patient in the equation above. By following my tips you will cure your diabetes and you will live a disease-free life.

Then you live many times longer than if you continue in the old way.

To keep it sober as befits us Americans: you will die anyway. But you have a choice whether you want to put this off for a few more decades and whether you want a lot of pain or no pain for the last ten years of your life.

If you have type 2 diabetes, you can choose to intervene now and reduce the chance that this will kill you. It is then perfectly possible to grow old with type 2 diabetes. Do you want to know how? Then look here:

The Diabetes-Free Secret

As you have read, life expectancy in type 2 diabetes is very dependent on your lifestyle. Healthy aging is more in control than you might have thought before reading this article. I want to help you a bit with this.

It has recently been discovered that it is possible to reverse type 2 diabetes. You can find everything you need in the supermarket.

You turn it around with one powerful method. It’s what I call “The Diabetes-Free Secret.” About this secret I have written several pages that will change your life forever. You will learn in it:

Why You Got Type 2 Diabetes

 What mechanism can you use to reverse diabetes

 The best tips to be diabetes-free in a few weeks

Enter your best email address to get the Free E-Book, Click Here…

Greetings,

John Scott

P.s: What are you doing to increase life expectancy in type 2 diabetes? Is there anything you do specifically to age healthily? Leave a comment below

Originally published at https://khalories.com on September 7, 2021.