For the Kaiser Permanente study, the team looked at over 26,000 people with diabetes. The results were patients who met the recommended guidelines for all three risk factors (blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol), and those who just met the blood pressure and cholesterol guidelines, were the least likely to be hospitalised for a heart attack or stroke. At the other end of the scale, when people met only the blood sugar, or none of the guidelines, they were the most likely to be hospitalised for a heart attack or stroke. Roughly 13% percent of patients in the study met targets for all three risk factors, and their rate of hospitalisation for heart attack and stroke 2.5 times lower, on average, than the patients who met none of the targets.
According to Greg Nichols, PhD, lead author of the study and senior investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Centre for Health Research, ‘People with diabetes are often focused on controlling their blood sugar, but our study found that controlling blood pressure and cholesterol is even more important in preventing heart disease.’ This is important because, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, if you’re an adult with diabetes you are two to four times more likely to have cardiovascular disease than someone without diabetes, and most people with diabetes will die from a heart attack or stroke.
However, Nichols warned, ‘This doesn’t mean that people with diabetes should ignore their blood-sugar levels. They should still get regular A1C tests to measure and control their blood glucose, but it’s also important to pay attention to other factors that increase the risk for cardiovascular disease.’ Therefore, if you have diabetes you should follow the recommendations of the American Diabetes Association, which state that your target blood pressure reading should be below 130/80 mm Hg, your LDL (bad) cholesterol level should be less than 100 mg/dl, and your A1C blood glucose level should be below 7%.