Type 2 diabetes is a deceptive disease. In its early stages, the condition may be nearly symptomless. Yet if not properly controlled, it can damage almost every major organ system and shorten your life by years. Fortunately, there are good treatments, and some of the best drugs and other remedies also happen to be the least expensive.

Type 2 diabetes—like its cousin, type 1 diabetes—results from a defect in the body's ability to control the level of sugar in the blood. The disease is "type 1" when your body has stopped making the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar. In "type 2," your body still produces insulin, but your cells have become resistant to the hormone. In either case, blood sugar rises to an unhealthy level.

The reason for concentrating on type 2 diabetes is that the number of cases has soared in recent years, making it one of the nation's most pressing health problems. About 24 million Americans have the disease, or 8 percent of the population. Another 1.5 million are diagnosed each year. Worse, another 60 million—roughly one person in four—have blood sugar that's high enough for them to be considered "pre-diabetic" (see "What is pre-diabetes?"), and hence more likely to develop the disease. Health authorities blame the epidemic on an increase in people who are overweight or obese, eat a poor diet, or don't exercise.

People with diabetes run nearly double the normal risk of heart disease, which is about the same increase as that caused by smoking cigarettes or having high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Diabetes also raises the danger of stroke, nerve and kidney damage, liver disease, impotence, poor wound healing, and infection. Left untreated, the disease can cause blindness, kidney failure, and amputations, and it can knock an average of eight years off your life.

That's a gloomy picture, to be sure. But there's an upside to the diabetes story in recent years. Studies now show conclusively that those who receive proper care can live and work normally, well into their later years.

The first steps toward good care all involve changing your habits: namely, cut back on food portion sizes, eat fewer carbohydrates and more fruits and vegetables, quit smoking, and become more physically active. For some people, these changes are enough; they don't have to take drugs right away. But lifestyle changes aren't always adequate. The fact is that most people with type 2 diabetes will eventually need to take medicines to control blood sugar.