One thing that confused me when I first started scratching my head about diabetes, was a very simple question.

If your body is producing too much insulin, surely that’s going to lower your blood sugar levels?

But that’s the rub of it – too much insulin raises the risk of the complications that go hand in hand in with diabetes, like heart disease and cancer.

That’s why some doctors say insulin is as bad for you as sugar.

So taking something to raise your insulin levels, just to lower your blood sugar levels, causes health problems somewhere else.

And that was my light bulb moment. I know it’s a cliché – but it the more I find about staying healthy, the more I agree with it:

You’ve got to treat the cause, not the symptoms.

And the truth is taking something to lower your blood sugar is just treating a symptom. It’s never going to go away unless you tackle the cause head on.

Fortunately, there are a lot of things you can do. I started with these 5 small changes – none of them diet related.