Are YOU Aware of the Diabetes Dilemma?

Dying from Diabetes

By Tim Cullen

Diabetes is a major concern in the United States today. There are two types of diabetes, type 1 and type 2 as they are simply called.  Type 2 is the most prevalent in the United States accounting for the vast majority of cases. Most everyone knows about diabetes and how it is, obviously, not good for one's health. In this article I hope to spread even more knowledge to the public about the issues of Type 2 diabetes in this world we live in.

Facts About Diabetes in America 

 

2007 statistics of adults, by county, older than the age of 20 diagnosed with diabetes

More than 25.8 million Americans have diabetes, accounting for about 8.3% of the population (1). This already is a high amount of individuals, but that is not the end of it. 79 million Americans have something known as "pre-diabetes" (1). Pre-diabetes is stage before full-blown diabetes where people are at an increased risk of developing diabetes and the chronic diseases that come with it. If people with pre-diabetes do not start taking preventative measures, then it may escalate into worse problems.

Now that I have shined light upon the amount of people with diabetes or pre-diabetes in America, let's talk costs. Diabetes costs the country $174 billion per year (4). This is an outrageous amount of money spent on something that can be prevented with a healthy and semi-active lifestyle. We will go even more in depth about the costs in a moment, but 50% of Medicare beneficiaries had diabetes in 2010 (1). We could save enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars if we focused on implementing preventative measures for diabetes.

Consequences (1)

Below is a list of consequences from having pre-diabetes and diabetes.

• Pre-diabetes: high blood pressure and high cholesterol to strokes and kidney disease.
• Diabetes: cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, eye disease, blindness and possible nerve damage
• Costs
• Average yearly health care cost for diabetes patient = $11,744
• Average yearly health care cost for non-diabetes patient = $2,560
• The results are staggering and this shows that this could save serious money for our country if we tackle the prevention aspect of diabetes

Prevention of Diabetes

The best way to prevent diabetes is to simply change your lifestyle.  Yes there are medications out there that helps you cope with having diabetes, but it never really helps. Of course changing your lifestyle is not the total answer to fixing this issue completely, but it is impactful. By changing lifestyle I am advocating 3 things

• Eating healthier foods. Staying away from high saturated fat, high carbohydrate and high sodium meals is a good start.
• Incorporate physical activity into your life. Just 30 minutes a day can help and eventually bumping that up to 60 minutes it awesome. Even something as simple as walking somewhere you would normally drive is a great idea!
• Losing a modest amount of weight. I am not asking you to lose heaps of weight, but every pound helps.

Diabetes Prevention Program (DDP)

Diabetes Prevention Program was a clinical trial attempting to find if lifestyle changes had a major affect on diabetes prevalence in patients. Listed below is what they found.

·        Over a 3 year span

• Lifestyle intervention resulted in a 58% reduced chance to go from pre-diabetes to diabetes
• Metformin  resulted in only a 31% reduced chance to go from pre-diabetes to diabetes
• Metformin is a drug to combat diabetes and is the main drug taken to counteract Type 2 diabetes
• Lifestyle intervention ages 60+ resulted in a 71% reduced chance from pre-diabetes to diabetes

Now this is results for a 3 year span and it was wondered if this could be sustained. The program did follow ups and it was found that it was still sustained 10 years later (2).

Conclusion

Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90% of the diabetes complications out there and it is a glaring issue. It increases taxpayer costs and health care costs by billions every year. A simple and easy way to begin tackling this issue is through diet rather than medicine. Getting more active and watching what we eat is important for us to reduce the prevalence of diabetes in this country. Staying away from high saturated fat, high carbohydrate and high sodium foods is a great start at tackling this issue. Getting active for as little as 30 minutes 3 times a week can also be huge in taking on the diabetes issue by the horns. The activity does not even have to be high intensity workouts, something as simple as walking instead of driving to the local shop at the corner is a great choice. Obviously this isn't the only solution to the issue of diabetes, but it certainly does not make the situation worse if done correctly. Even if you do not have pre-diabetes or diabetes, I URGE you to try and change your lifestyle for the better!

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Sources:

Brown, W., & Hayes, C. (2013). Academy Policy Strategies to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 113(11), 1443-1447.