National Diabetes Prevention Program

The Wellness Connection has been working with an exciting program called the National Diabetes Prevention Program to help people who are at risk for diabetes to lose weight and increase their physical activity. There is a lot of misinformation about diabetes and prediabetes, but the important aspect of this program is it is a year-long lifestyle-modification program that follows a curriculum found by the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.

All types of people are at risk for type 2 diabetes, but the predominant thing the NDPP program focuses on is evidence-based education.

There are an estimated 89 million Americans of every walk of life that will become diabetic. And it is so important to the quality of life of those people, their families, and their employers to avoid diabetes, it’s complications, and it’s tolls on society. A single stay in the hospital can cost tens of thousands of dollars and managing type 2 diabetes can cost much, much more. Furthermore, the medications used to treat type 2 diabetes are extremely dangerous and have unpleasant side effects, which is not to say they aren’t effective at improving quality of life and increasing life expectancy once someone is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but they are medications that can reduce blood sugar and need to be managed carefully.

The CDC found two things were vastly superior to oral medications for preventing type 2 diabetes. Losing 7% of your body weight and increasing your physical activity by 150 minutes more per week over the course of a year. Regardless of initial weight and physical activity. Unlike most advice that people are charging money for nowadays, the NDPP cohort that the Wellness Connection is running uses curriculum approved by the CDC, a uniformed service of the US Government that fights epidemics and responds to health emergencies. We train people to use whatever tools they have to keep their own inventory of calories, physical activity, and weight loss. Participants keeping their own inventory of these factors are proven to prevent or delay illness. And they’re fun!