The CDC has announced worrisome statistics regarding diabetes. In 2012, 9 percent of American adults had the disease, which increases the risk of cardiovascular complications such as kidney failure, stroke or heart disease and premature death.
An estimated 29 million of us now have diabetes, although at least one in four have not been diagnosed with it. An additional 86 million are at risk of developing diabetes. That means one in three adults are currently considered pre-diabetic.
Children are not immune. Increasingly, type 2 diabetes is being diagnosed among adolescents and even younger children. Experts advise that increasing physical activity and decreasing excess weight can protect some of those at risk from eventually developing this devastating metabolic disorder.
In The People’s Pharmacy perspective, obesity and diabetes seem to be twin epidemics that public health experts are having difficulty controlling. It is not possible to untangle which is driving the other, or whether they are reinforcing each other. Several of the experts we have talked with over the past few years suggest that we need to revamp the standard American diet (and put more active play into our days) if we want to reverse these trends. You may be interested in our conversations with Robert Lustig, Mark Hyman or William Polonsky and Richard Bernstein. We also offer our Guide to Managing Diabetes for further information.
