Check your waist
Heart disease is the most common cause of death in women as well as men and diabetes is on the rampage with a million-plus undiagnosed sufferers.
It's well known that obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease and that if your BMI (Body Mass Index) is over 35, you are 80 times more likely to develop Type-II Diabetes than someone with a BMI of 22.
To save yourself the trouble of calculating your BMI or standing on the scales, just grab a tape measure and put it round your middle. If your waist measures more than one metre (39 inches), you're at serious risk of developing insulin resistance which can lead to Type-II Diabetes. This simple fact emerged when scientists at the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden published the results of studying almost 3,000 healthy men and women.
By Michael van Straten, nutritionist and naturopath
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