How Vitamins Help Prevent Diabetes

While the best ways to prevent type 2 diabetes are to get regular exercise and maintain a healthy diet, research shows that including specific vitamins in your diet may help as well. Having a complete and nutritious diet is essential to living a healthy life, and if you include certain supplemental vitamins in your diet you may ward off chronic illnesses like diabetes and cancer.

Get some sun. Vitamin D is easy to get in a supplement, in milk, or just by spending about 5-10 minutes in direct sunlight every day. While too much sun exposure is very dangerous and can lead to skin cancer, a few minutes of sun a day is enough to get plenty of vitamin D, which is known to help prevent diabetes. Try drinking more milk, which contains calcium and Vitamin D, because calcium has been shown to reverse the onset of diabetes.

Try taking Vitamin E. This vitamin is plentiful in many common foods, such as almonds, spinach, kale, and avocado. Vitamin E helps to boost your insulin level, which then lowers glucose in the blood. In addition to preventing diabetes, vitamin E helps strengthen blood flow and lowers your risk for heart disease.
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Get your daily dose of Vitamin C. Like Vitamin E, Vitamin C helps filter sugar out of the bloodstream, and also increases the efficiency of insulin to reach individual cells throughout the body. Try drinking a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, or take Vitamin C supplements.

Eat plenty of leafy greens. Foods such as broccoli, spinach, kale, and swiss chard help prevent insulin resistance and reduce the risk of getting diabetes. When insulin becomes resistant, glucose levels increase and blood sugar rises.

Have you heard of Chromium? This mineral is present in many common foods, such as grapefruit, tomatoes, apples, and whole wheat products. Many people with diabetes have a chromium deficiency. Eating foods high in chromium helps insulin work more efficiently, which then lowers blood sugar.

Drink plenty of water! Water has no vitamins, but it plays a huge role in weight loss. The more you drink, the easier you digest, and the less you eat. Don’t mistake diet soda as a replacement, either. Diet soda has been proven to actually increase appetite and weight gain, as well as dehydration.