Lifestyle changes reduce diabetes risk

26 million Americans have diabetes. It's a dangerous illness, but a new report says that making the right lifestyle choices can dramatically reduce your risk of becoming diabetic.

Richard Tartick has good reasons to fear diabetes - it played a major role in his father's death.

"The diabetes was a key factor. He had a stroke at a very young age of 63, a severe stroke, and died at 66, so he died very young," said Tartick.

Can he protect himself against becoming diabetic? A new report says perhaps he can. The study followed more than 200,000 people who were aged from 50 to 71 when they were enrolled, and didn't have diabetes, heart disease or cancer. They were followed for 11 years and five lifestyle characteristics were checked - their diet, the amount of exercise they got, how much they drank, whether they smoked, and their body mass index.

Those who had the healthiest lifestyles were 80 percent less likely to become diabetic. That's a huge boost to overall health.

Dr. Howard Sperry explained, "It affects so many different organs in your body, your eyes, your blood vessels, your heart, your kidneys."

Dr. Sperry gives his patients a sheet of cartoons showing all the bad things diabetes can do to the body.

"If they can walk away with a cartoon, and then link what we're saying to the cartoon, this impacts them," said Dr. Sperry.

But we've all heard it all before. Will this time be different?

Tartick said, "I really have a lot of motivation to do the right things and I tell myself and I tell Dr. Sperry every time I see him that I'm going to make those changes and I clearly hope to."

People try, they really do, but sometimes it gets frustrating.

Dr. Sperry said, "I'll threaten them, and I tell them I'm going to fire you as a patient if you don't listen to me."

Tartick laughed, "Check with me in a year see how we're doing."

Tartick doesn't want to be fired by his doctor, but more importantly, he really doesn't want to suffer from diabetes - especially if he can avoid it. That's what's new about this report - the amount of success you can have is really impressive.

But everybody understands what they should do and we all have good intentions - so why is it so difficult? Lifestyle changes are easier if you do them with a partner or a group. You can all avoid temptations together, and have fun exercising together. And it's worth it - you'll feel better and live longer.