One in Three Americans Could Be Diabetic by 2050

for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts, that number could increase to one in three by 2050.

The CDC analysis predicts that new diabetes cases each year will also increase from eight per 1,000 people in 2008 to 15 per 1,000 in 2050. In all, they estimated that one-third of U.S. adults will become diabetic in the next four decades.

Diabetes cases are expected to rise on the global scale as well, from 285 million in 2010 to 438 million in 2030, according to the International Diabetes Federation.

Diabetes Can Go Unrecognized for Years

Diabetes currently costs the United States $174 billion a year, $116 billion of which is for direct medical costs, according to CDC data. These costs are easily incurred because of the extreme toll type 2 diabetes can take on your health; in fact, the CDC notes that people with diabetes have twice the medical costs as those without it.

When you have type 2 diabetes, your body either does not make enough insulin or has become resistant to it. Anytime you eat, your body depends on insulin to take the glucose from the foods you eat and transfer it to your cells where it’s used for energy.

If your body does not have enough insulin, or your body has become resistant to the insulin it does have, glucose builds up in your bloodstream, leading to serious complications.

Already, 24 million Americans have diabetes, but one-quarter of them do not know they have it. An estimated 57 million also have pre-diabetes, a stepping-stone to the actual disease, and again many do not know it. This is because symptoms often develop slowly, sometimes over a period years, and may be easy to miss.

Initial diabetes symptoms include:

Increased thirst, caused by excess sugar in your bloodstream pulling fluids from your tissues, and frequent urination
Feelings of hunger, as your cells are not getting enough glucose for energy
Unexplained weight loss, as your body burns through fat and muscle since it’s not getting energy from glucose
Fatigue, since your cells are not receiving glucose for energy
Blurred vision, caused by fluid being pulled from your eye lenses
Frequent infections
Slow-healing wounds
Diabetes Poses Serious Risks to Your Health

If left untreated, diabetes can be a devastating, even life-threatening, illness. As of 2007, the latest year for which data is available, diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, as well as the leading cause of:

New cases of blindness in those under 75
Kidney failure
Leg and foot amputations (non-accident related)
Type 2 diabetes also increases your risk of:

Heart disease and stroke
Kidney damage
Blindness or vision problems
Gum disease
Neuropathy (nerve damage), which can lead to toe, foot or leg amputation
Sleep apnea
Depression
Problems during pregnancy
Bacterial and fungal skin infections
Hearing problems
Alzheimer’s disease
Osteoporosis
Based on the CDC’s report, one in three Americans could be at risk of developing not only type 2 diabetes, but also this laundry list of serious, even life-threatening, complications over the next several decades. This is an alarming prospect, but one that you and your family can use completely to your advantage because type 2 diabetes is often entirely preventable.

Do You Want to Reduce Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes by More than Half?

A trial from the National Institutes of Health Diabetes Prevention Program showed that lifestyle intervention programs reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by 58 percent — and that was among people already at higher risk of the disease.

What this means is that you can take steps right now to drastically reduce your risk of succumbing to diabetes, even if you’re currently overweight, insulin resistant, pre-diabetic or otherwise showing increased risk factors for the disease. In fact, even if you already have type 2 diabetes, these same lifestyle changes can help you to manage the illness and, oftentimes, reverse it.

What types of lifestyle interventions am I referring to?

First and foremost, attention to proper diet and regular exercise. These will be your tickets to staying diabetes-free, but you’ve got to make sure you’re eating the right diet and doing the proper types and intensity of exercise.

Unfortunately, if you see most physicians in the United States, they’ll typically give you drugs for diabetes, which not only ignore the underlying causes of the disease, but typically make you get worse, not better, over time.

For instance, more than half a million Americans currently take the diabetes drug Avandia, which has been linked to a 43 percent greater risk of heart attack and an increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular causes.

Insulin injections are also fraught with their own set of problems, as most type 2 diabetics do not lack insulin — rather their body has lost the ability to utilize it. Adding even more insulin to your system is therefore not the solution, and in fact can cause a set of new health problems in and of itself, like increased risks of cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease and weight gain, all from excessively high insulin levels.

It’s a complex issue and one that requires the guidance of a health care practitioner who can help you look beyond the label of the disease and uncover WHY you developed diabetes in the first place. There may be nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, organ dysfunction or other factors at play that need to be addressed.

So, if you currently have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, or have risk factors for the disease like family history, a sedentary lifestyle, or excess weight, it’s important to understand that drugs and insulin are not the solution. If your physician prescribes them, it may be time to seek the help of a new health care provider who can offer you a customized treatment program to reverse the course of the disease, naturally, without drugs or insulin.

And for those of you who are interested in preventing the disease outright, be sure you eat a range of healthy foods, including plenty of fresh veggies, stay active and maintain a healthy weight.

This will all but ensure that one, two or more decades from now you’ll be completely diabetes-free.

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Good Food Good Health – Diabetes And Vitamin D

Are you like me and finding it more and more confusing with the information we are given about vitamins. One-day vitamin supplements are the way to go – the next day we should drop them like a hot potato and stay clear.

The best way to get all the vitamins we need is by eating a good varied diet of nutritional food, as we always say ‘good food is good health’, this should be as fresh as possible as storage depletes the values as well as over cooking.

Sometimes, as when taking drugs or medication they do have a negative effect on some parts of the body such as the liver, but the consequence of not taking them could be of greater significance.

So when taking vitamins – even though you can pick them up readily at any grocery store and health food shop, it is always recommended to ask your Doctor or health adviser opinion before taking.

Recently there has been speculation that Vitamin D could greatly cut the chance of Type 1 diabetes developing later in life if supplements are taken in early childhood.

The research showed that children who were given the additional Vitamin D were up to 80 per cent less likely to go on and develop the disease compared to those not given the supplement.

It was noticed that the higher the dose and the more regularly taken, the lower the chance of developing the condition.

Another study found that those who took any amount of Vitamin D had a lower rate of diabetes than the group that took no supplement.

Vitamin D is believed to help by acting as an immuno-suppressant agent, as Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease, and may prevent an over-aggressive reaction from the immune system – when the immune system destroys it own cells.

Type 1diabetes develops when insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas are destroyed.

Vitamin D is only found in a few natural food sources such as eggs (the yolk), fish and shellfish. Salmon, tuna, herring, halibut, shrimps and oysters are excellent sources.

Often foods are already enriched or fortified with vitamin D – milk being a good example, some breakfast cereals, soy drinks and some varieties of margarine.

Obviously it is better if you can reach your daily requirement from your diet – the RDA is not the same in all countries so check with a pharmacist or your health centre who will be pleased to advise you.

There are many supplements of Vitamin D readily available; I know that I reach my required RDA as the cod liver oil supplement I take daily includes vitamins A, D and E, even though I make sure I eat fish at least twice a week and generally eat eggs on almost a daily basis.

So if Vitamin D can cut the chance of us developing diabetes in later life, it really is important that we do eat a wide variety of foods to attain it and all the other vitamins and minerals to stave off other illnesses and diseases.

Eating a healthy diet can only benefit us, and the earlier in life we start the better. Therefore we all need to look to our diets and see if we are lacking in any area or over indulging in others.

Us as parents need to instil early in life a good varied diet to our children – before they become ‘faddy and picky’ and only want to eat the latest ‘in’ food.

Granted this can be quite difficult with children, but perseverance usually works and by introducing a small amount of a new food regularly helps.

So remember ‘good food is good health’ and that ‘we are what we eat’.

Sandra & Ted

This article was composed by Sandra & Ted Wosko. We have always been interested in health issues especially having children, and as with most people, we all suffer with some type of ailment. We are always researching on more and more topics in the endless task of gaining more knowledge to increase our expertise, benefiting ourselves and other people alike.

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