Doctors should consistently advise their patients about the effects of a poor diet and the benefits of a healthy diet (Rodgers, 1999). Food can be favorable to a persons health or be the demise. Researchers from several colleges studied "the relation between dietary fatty acids and diabetes in a prospective cohort study of 35, 988 older women who initially did not have diabetes. Diet was assessed with a food frequency questionnaire, at baseline, and 1, 890 incident cases of diabetes occurred during 11 years of follow-up" (Meyer, Kushi, Jacobs, Folsom, 2001). The researchers concluded that there is a clear relationship between only vegetable fat intake to a diabetic risk. Knowing how to maintain a healthy balance of diabetes and how to prevent diabetes, individuals can structure their life accordingly. Knowing that there is a risk in the family is another clue to monitor and make sure to lead a healthy lifestyle. Diet, being the crucial part of diabetes, can be controlled and managed with discipline and education. .
Another method in controlling and even preventing diabetes is through drugs. The newest drug on the market, and possible one of the few, that actually helps diabetics is the drug Xenical. Xenical works by reducing the absorption of fat into the intestines and is unable to get into the bloodstream, therefore the nervous system and heart problems are not present. Markolf Hanefeld, MD, lead author involved in a research study from the University of Dresdan in Germany, studied "type 2 diabetics, everyone was treated with a mildly reduced low-fat diet. Either Xenical or a placebo pill was given to more than 360 people for one year. Those on Xenical lost an average of 12 lbs, about twice the weight that the people taking the dummy pill lost" (Barclay, 2001). As a result, the waistline of those on Xenical were thinner than those ho took the placebo. The drug is important to those who have Type 2 diabetes considering that overweight individuals usually have the blood sugar disease.