Effects & Results of Diabetes - Statistics

Sadly, many of us will lose friends and family before they are even diagnosed! Research shows that diabetes is directly or indirectly responsible for the following statistics in the USA every year:

• Premature death from heart disease - 70,000
• Amputations of the lower limbs - 80,000+
• Problems associated with kidney disease - 115,000
• Reduction of vision and blindness - 25,000

Diabetes is an Epidemic in the United States.

Diabetes is becoming more common in the United States.

• From 1980 through 2002, the number of Americans with diabetes more than doubled (from 5.8 million to 13.3 million).
• From 1990 to 1999, the percentage of diabetes in the U.S. population rose from 4.9% to 6.9%.

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) the greatest increase in obesity and lack of physical activity occurred in people in their 30's, so therefore it is not surprising to find a 70% increase in just 8 years. We are now beginning to see the consequences of physical inactivity and weight gain that go well beyond feeling good about yourself or cosmetic issues.
Approximately 17,000,000 Americans have diabetes. This equates to 6.9% of the population. At the current rate of increase, there will be about one million new cases per year.
The really frightening part of this is that this is probably an "under estimation" because it is not uncommon for diabetes to go undetected for as long as 12 years before being properly diagnosed, and that is assuming that it will be caught at all. This is the true danger of Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome.

Diabetes Statistics

What are the statistics on Diabetes?

• The per capita death toll was highest in the Middle East and parts of the Pacific, with more than one in four deaths in the 35-64 age range attributed to diabetes.
• There are currently more than 194 million people with diabetes worldwide. If nothing is done to slow the epidemic, the number will exceed 333 million by 2025 and the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Diabetes Foundation say the number of diabetics worldwide will be 366 million by 2030.
• In 2003, the five countries with the largest numbers of persons with diabetes were India (35.5 million), China (23.8 million), the United States (16 million), Russia (9.7 million) and Japan (6.7 million).
• At least 50% of all people with diabetes are unaware of their condition. In some countries this figure may rise to 80%.
• Diabetes is the fourth main cause of death in most developed countries.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness and visual impairment in adults in developed countries.
• Diabetes is the most common cause of amputation which is not the result of an accident. People with diabetes are 15 to 40 times more likely to require a lower-limb amputation compared to the general population.
• People with diabetes are two to four times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than people without diabetes.
• People with Type II diabetes have the same risk of heart attack as people without diabetes who have already had a heart attack.
• People with diabetes can have a heart attack without even realising it.
• Strokes occur twice as often in people with diabetes and high blood pressure as in those with high blood pressure alone.
• For each risk factor present, the risk of cardiovascular death is about three times greater in people with diabetes as compared to people without the condition.
• By 2025, the number of people with diabetes is expected to more than double in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, South-East Asia, and rise by 20% in Europe, 50% in North America, 85% in South and Central America and 75% in the Western Pacific.
• For developing countries, there will be a projected increase of a 170% of cases; for developed countries, there will be a projected rise of 42%. 1

1. Diabetes Atlas, Second Edition, International Diabetes Federation, 2003.

Gestational Diabetes Information

Gestational Diabetes
Another medical risk is gestational diabetes. This occurs in pregnant women due to abnormalities in their glucose levels and insulin secretion. Hormone changes associated with pregnancy interferes with insulin function. Although a woman’s bodily functions go back to normal after the pregnancy in most circumstances, there are statistics that report that as many as 50% of women with gestational diabetes develop Type II diabetes within twenty years of their pregnancy.

Type II diabetes

Type II Diabetes
Type II diabetes can develop as a result of several factors including genetics and diet. If there is a history of diabetes within the family tree as well as group ancestry, a person is more likely to develop diabetes. Medical risks are also factors for a person to develop Type II diabetes. Such medical risks are impaired glucose tolerance or pre-diabetes, which occurs when blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.

Type I diabetes

Type I Diabetes
Type I diabetes occurs when the body is unable to produce insulin, a hormone manufactured and secreted by the pancreas. People with type I diabetes produce little or no insulin at all because their immune systems attack and destroy the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Although it is not clear what specifically causes type I diabetes, it is believed that exposure to a toxin or viral infection may trigger this autoimmune attack in genetically susceptible individuals. In type I diabetes, beta cells are destroyed gradually, but symptoms do not appear until at least 80% of the cells are affected.

Type I is more likely to occur in childhood or adolescence and remain throughout life as there is no cure. The only treatment is regular monitoring of blood sugar and injection of insulin as needed to regulate the levels of blood sugar.However, effective treatment allows most people with Type I diabetes to live long lives. Of all diabetes cases, approximately five to ten percent are Type I.

The Discovery of Insulin

The Discovery of Insulin
1921 A.D.Banting and Best discover that insulin is secreted from the islet cells of the pancreas. The discovery of insulin was one of the most dramatic events in the history of medicine; it overshadows everything else in the story of diabetes. Frederick Banting was an unsuccessful orthopaedic surgeon who, on reading of the association of the destruction of the pancreas with diabetes, became convinced that he could find the antidiabetic substance. He was so ignorant that he did not know how many other people had tried in the 40 years since Minkowski. That was Banting’s strength; he did not realise how difficult the problem was. Nothing would stop him. He persuaded J.J.R. Macleod, the Professor of Physiology at Toronto who did understand the problem and its difficulties, to let him try. Macleod assigned a young medical student, Charles Best, to work with him and later (when the process of extraction and stability of the pancreas secretion was proving difficult) he put a visiting professor J.B. Collip, a biochemist, on to the problem with dramatic results.

Banting's original idea had been that it was the external secretions of the pancreas which destroyed the 'insulin'. So he tied off the pancreatic duct, waited some weeks for the glandular part of the pancreas to atrophy, and then made an extract of the remaining gland. In the end this logical process proved not to be effective and insulin was obtained by standard chemical methods of extraction. Finally, an extract was made which could be tried on patients. It had a dramatic effect. For the first time levels of blood glucose were lowered. Young patients who had been slowly dying of their diabetes lost their consuming thirst, recovered their strength and regained their lost weight. It was a miraculous transformation. A universally fatal disease had been controlled; so long as they took their daily insulin injections, patients could be restored to normal life.

We can easily forget today, when insulin treatment is universally available and successful, what type I diabetes meant before this discovery. Death was a slow one. Some of those youngsters who were the first to be treated with insulin had been wasting away for years, losing ground all the time but kept alive by ferocious dieting. 'Dieting' meant starvation. This early method of treatment was the only way to control blood sugar levels. Early diabetologists such as Elliott Joslin in Boston and Frederick Allen in New York were very strict with this dietary approach and they had to be. They had nothing else to offer but diet. If the patient got an infection and the diabetes got worse, the answer was an even stricter diet. It was a miserable situation for diabetics and heart breaking for the parents of these children.

History of Diabetes

History of Diabetes
Diabetes has been with us since ancient times despite the fact that in the past it was considered to be an uncommon disease; this of course is not the case today.

1500 B.C. - The papyrus Ebers of the ancient Egyptians had a number of remedies for combating the passing of too much urine. The earliest known record of diabetes is first mentioned in a 3rd Dynasty Egyptian papyrus by the physician Hesy-Ra. The document mentions polyuria (frequent urination) as a symptom of an unknown condition.

1000 B.C. - The father of East Indian medicine Susruta, was one of the first to diagnose diabetes mellitus (DM). Hindu manuscripts in the Ayur Veda recorded that insects and flies were attracted to the sweet tasting urine of some people and that this was associated with certain diseases.

1798 A.D. - John Rollo confirms that there is excess sugar in the blood. John Rollo, Surgeon-General to the Royal Artillery, treated Captain Meredith in 1796 by dietary restriction, with considerable success for the patient survived for at least a year. Rollo's next patient was a general; he was less obedient, did not follow the diet and dies shortly after. Rollo also noticed the smell of acetone on the breath of diabetics, presumably those in the advanced stage of type I diabetes. He also observed cataracts in diabetics.

1889 A.D. - Mehring and Minkowski produce DM in dogs by removing the pancreas. Another observation by Thomas Cawley one hundred years earlier was that the pancreas of a patient who had died of diabetes showed stones and tissue damage, but the significance of this vital clue of 1788 was appreciated only 101 years later, when Minkowski removed the pancreas from a dog and unexpectedly produced diabetes.

The Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome

The Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome is a group of health risk factors that increase the likelihood of heart disease,65-68 and other disorders, such as diabetes and some cancers.69,70 The risk factors that make up Syndrome X include insulin resistance, which refers to the reduced ability of the hormone insulin to control the processing of glucose by the body. Other major risk factors often associated with Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome include high blood sugar and high blood triglycerides, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, high blood pressure and excessive body fat in the abdominal region. People with Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome do not always have every one of these risk factors, but they usually have many of them. A qualified doctor should make the diagnosis of Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome after a thorough examination and blood tests.

Most people with Type II diabetes have insulin resistance, but many more people who are not diabetic also have insulin resistance. 71-73 Since it is currently thought that insulin resistance itself often does not cause symptoms, these people may not be aware of their problem. This attitude will probably change as research continues. Some authorities believe insulin resistance is partially inherited and partially due to lifestyle factors. In addition to the recommendations discussed further in this book, people with Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome may benefit from some of the recommendations given for Type II diabetes. People with this condition should also benefit from health strategies that reduce the severity of the risk factors they possess, including obesity, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure.

As Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome is often the precursor of Type II diabetes, it will be informative to start at the end; this is what can happen if Syndrome X / Metabolic Syndrome is not discovered and more importantly, prevented.

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Welcome to the Diabetes Information Blog

Introduction
Diabetes has been with us since ancient times. In the far distant past it was referred to as being an infrequent condition. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Diabetes is one of the fastest-growing, chronic conditions in the world. Despite its prevalence in the general population, it is remarkable that so few people are diagnosed with diabetes. The primary reason for this turn of events is pre-diabetic symptoms are generally unrecognized by the average person. As a result, only a fraction of potential diabetics are diagnosed every year; the majority of diabetics or pre-diabetics are never recognized or treated as their blood sugar levels are not within the parameters or definition of a blood sugar condition.
In order to understand about the viable and effective options the public has in avoiding this condition, it is vital to be aware of what Syndrome X or Metabolic Syndrome is and why this condition is in some ways more insidious and dangerous than diabetes is. This condition is dangerous partly because medical authorities don’t believe they can or should treat or prevent it and partly because there is no screening or public awareness programs. This is the primary reason why this blog has been written. It is up to individuals to help and educate themselves; this is the best prevention after all.