When I was about 8, I remember trying to listen to make sure my mom was still breathing. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t somehow died during her noon nap. Having heard her breathing (and or snoring), I’d go out and play.

Paranoia? Well, it’s a possibility. Then again, I had a few reasons to be worried about my mom--reasons such as stroke, high blood pressure, arrhythmias, type 2diabetes, congestive heart failure, end stage kidney failure, kidney stones and duodenal ulcers, just to name a few. As you can imagine, a body can't stand up to so many diseases for without breaking down. It was the eve of her 70th birthday when her body finally gave up. It was just a day before we had been planning to celebrate her life and there we were bemoaning her death.

In a time when a woman’s average life expectancy is about eighty, this was too short a life. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could hop into a time-travelling DeLorean, rev up to 88mph and, with a trail of flames, take my knowledge of the human body back 15 years ago when it could have helped my mom.

That won’t happen, of course, so I seek recourse in reality, helping my patients in a way I can’t help my mom. These patients are 70, 80, 90, 100 years old, ill and debilitated in very complex ways. There are limits to what I can do, but contrary to what Depeche Mode used to say, everything counts even in SMALL amounts.

Still, as the faces and fragile bodies of my patients remind me of my mom, I see the power of well-timed prevention efforts. Yeah sometimes I can fix bodies, but why should they be broken? The saying goes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s true enough but I think the analogy is an order of magnitude off. An ounce of prevention isn’t worth a pound of cure, it’s worth a TON of cure.

At work, I see people dying almost on a daily basis. What went wrong and when? My question often leads (literally) to a trail of crumbs. Cake crumbs, chip crumbs, pastry crumbs…it’s usually a lifetime of poor food choices and an inactive lifestyle. Sadly, this usually starts early. In fact, one study found that the fatty plaques that clog your arteries are evident as early as grade school!

That’s a reason to worry, no doubt. But it’s not a reason to give up. In the world of birds, the dumb Dodo birds gave up. The wise old Owls learned to adapt. There’s plenty of very basic things you and I can do to keep what happened to my mom from happening to ourselves, our children or family and friends.

It’s a simple as this: we NEED to exercise and eat right. It’s not an option. All the money ever printed won’t do a dot of good if you’re too tired, depressed, sick or dead to enjoy it. That’s why I’m doing everything I can to live healthfully and get the word out to all of you. It’s never late to make things better. And it’s never too early either.

Nature hasn’t taken part in the equal rights movement—this includes an equal right to disease. According to a new study by the CDC, women in America make up 60% of all new cases of diabetes. Sorry men. According to Dr. James Anderson, a professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky, obesity is one of the major factors behind this alarming statistic. In fact, he points out that "80% of people with type II diabetes are obese" (emphasis mine).

Anderson adds that “Fifty-five percent of women in the U.S are considered overweight and 35 percent are considered obese. So basically, we’re talking about 60 million women.”

Anderson sums it up like this: “…inactivity puts women at a greater risk for obesity, which is often a direct precursor to diabetes…For every one percent of her body weight a woman gains after high school, her risk for heart disease increases about five percent. For every same one percent gained, that woman’s risk of developing diabetes increases by 10 percent. In other words, if you’ve gained weight since high school (and that’s probably pretty much everyone), your risk for heart disease and diabetes has increased.”

And how do we combat this? Simple: get off the couch, chair, bench, rock, or whatever you’re sitting on and start moving! Diabetes is serious business.

Okay. The delay is over. Here I am and so are you, so let’s get started on how exercising can change your life. My first feature post here will focus on diabetes because I consider it the gateway disease—invite diabetes and you’ll have a bunch of unwelcome guests crashing your party.

I’m all for scare tactics so allow me to use one now. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the prevalence of the disease went up by 14% in the 2 years between 2005 and 2007. That’s a couple of million new cases!

In total, 24 million of your family members, friends, and neighbors throughout the U.S. now suffer from diabetes. Believe me, this is one club you don’t want to join. And if you already joined, now’s the time to opt out.

Let me tell you why in just three words: steep membership dues. There’s a number of very nasty fees you’ll end up paying. These range from the 2 to 4 times increased risk of developing heart disease and stroke to the almost certain dues in high blood pressure and nerve damage. As if that wasn’t enough, some of the taxes levied against you may include blindness (24,000 cases), kidney disease (44% of members), and amputations (over 70,000/year).

So there’s the nasty news. Want to hear the good news? It doesn’t matter if you have diabetes or you’re at increased risk because everyone in your gene pool has or had it, you can do things to help yourself. Two of those things are a good diet and exercise. For more information on diet, you can check out THIS. Here I’ll focus on a few benefits of exercise for diabetes.

First, a little diabetes 101:
Too little, ineffective or non-existent insulin levels allow glucose (sugar) to stay in the bloodstream. This starves your cells of the energy they need and allows the freely floating glucose to wreak havoc on all of the body’s systems. This, in a nutshell is what diabetes does. Exercise can help to turn this around:

1. Exercise helps directly to lower glucose levels
2. Exercise also increases lean muscle which helps to pull the glucose out of your bloodstream and into your cells
3. Lastly, exercise ensures a healthy heart, mind and body. This helps to ward off the uninvited dinner guests that diabetes likes to bring with it.

So there you have it; another reason to exercise regularly. This is something all of the Beachbody programs help you to do, But if you or someone you know needs something more, you can check out Beachbody’s “Project You 2” It's a fitness AND diet program developed with and approved by Beachbody, a team of doctors and educators and the American Diabetes Association.