(HealthScout). Eating less fat, losing 10 pounds and lifting weights regularly may help prevent the most common form of diabetes.

People who did that as part of a study in Finland dramatically reduced their risk of Type II diabetes, say researchers who presented their findings at last week's meeting of the American Diabetes Association.

In Type II diabetes, which affects an estimated 16 million Americans, glucose (or sugar) builds up in the blood. Sometimes this happens because the body doesn't make enough insulin, a hormone that processes glucose and helps it get into the cells. Other times the cells simply stop responding to the insulin.

Diabetes can lead to other serious problems, including blindness, kidney disease, heart disease and limb amputation. It's the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.

The Finnish study, which ran from 1993 to 1998, involved 522 older, overweight men and women who were not diabetic but had what's called impaired glucose tolerance. A weight-loss program was tailored for each participant's physical health and needs, says Dr. Jaakko Tuomilehto, a professor at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland.

"Based on individual findings, our dieticians and physical education educators designed specific dietary and exercise intervention programs for these patients," he says.

In addition, 265 participants were classified as an intensive intervention group and worked closely with doctors to lose weight by eating fewer calories and saturated fats, increasing dietary fiber and adding weight lifting or resistance training to their exercise program.

These participants had hour-long private meetings with a dietician seven times during the first year and every three months thereafter. They kept food and exercise journals and joined supervised exercise programs focused on resistance training and weight lifting, rather than aerobic exercises.

The other 257 people met only once a year with a nutritionist and a doctor.

"We were less eager to promote aerobic exercise because glucose is burned in the muscles. It doesn't help in Type II diabetes that your lungs are OK and your circulation is OK, but your muscles are weak," Tuomilehto says.

The effects were dramatic, the researchers say.

The incidence of Type II diabetes dropped 58 percent, the study says. Of the 83 cases that developed in the five years of the study, only 26 occurred in the intensive intervention group, compared with 57 cases in the other group.

"This should be very encouraging news for people at high risk for Type II diabetes, such as those with diabetes in the family, those with hypertension, those who are overweight and women with prior gestation diabetes. They should start early to take care of themselves to prevent diabetes," Tuomilehto says.

"We certainly have plenty of data that reduction of fat in genetically susceptible animals will prevent the onset of diabetes," says Richard Surwit, professor and vice chairman for research in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University in North Carolina.

"And there are numerous epidemiological reports that dietary fat -- and not calories, carbohydrates or even sugar intake -- is the primary culprit in Type II diabetes," Surwit says.

Just why fat is such a problem, however, still befuddles researchers, he says.