New Help For Diabetic Patients But What About Bears?
19 Apr 2004
"My god", I thought, "why are we doing this to bears?"
For the human population the statistics of diabetes are staggering and they will eventually destroy our health care system. Every 45 seconds a new diabetic is diagnosed in North America. But it’s only those who have to take insulin day after day who know the magnitude of this disease. Now a unique device is available that won’t cure diabetes, but it will make life easier and safer for patients. Unfortunately, it won’t help bears.
A recent report in the Journal of Zoology states that black bears are becoming obese. Like humans they’ve developed slothful habits.
Jon Beckman, a bear expert, says urban bears are one-third less active and 30 per cent heavier than forest bears. Urban bears, rather than roaming the forest, are now dining at dumpsters at fast-food restaurants. And since garbage is available year-round many have given up hibernation. I’ve no experience treating bears, but I doubt they’re immune to diabetes.
What’s happened to humans is a tragedy of epic proportions. Fifty years ago 10 per cent of diabetes was due to obesity. Now 90 per cent is due to excess pounds. And what is largely a preventable disease has reached epidemic proportions.
The real shocker is what’s happening to children. An article published in the Archives for Disease in Children shows that they’re getting obese at an unheard of rate. And girls are setting the pace.
The irony is that clothing manufacturers know what is occurring while consumers bury their heads in the sand. During the past 20 years children’s tummies have increased by at least four centimeters with most of the expansion in the last five years.
But no one likes the idea of being labeled fat. So manufacturers have acted accordingly. Children’s clothes are now available up to size 20. The clothes are baggier and often have elastic waists. And what used to be a size 8 is now a size 7! All this is an attempt to fool children and parents and sets the stage for untold misery.
I wish a prediction I made 25 years ago was wrong. I wrote then that obesity, not cancer or heart disease, was the number one killer. That obesity often triggered these diseases, diabetes, coronary attack and some cancers.
Being a diabetic means a life-long tedious struggle to maintain a normal level of blood sugar. This requires regular injections of insulin. But you have to be sure you’re giving the right amount at the right time. All this is easier said than done.
In one survey 53 per cent of diabetes patients said they took an injection late, 64 per cent were unsure if they had taken the insulin dose and between 79 and 90 per cent didn’t leave the needles in long enough. Studies indicate these patients are more likely to develop atherosclerosis.
To guard against this possibility, one company Novo Nordisk has developed three types of insulin delivery systems. One called Novolin-Pen Junior has half unit increments for fine-tuning the dose and an easy-to-read scale for children. Novolin-Pen 3 has a magnifier to guard against the wrong dose, and a device to prevent needle stick injuries.
For patients who have to inject insulin two or more times a day there’s "InDuo". It’s a convenient dual system, accurately measuring blood glucose in five seconds and then delivering insulin. It also remembers the strength of the last dose and the time since the last injection. Patients can also do the test on the arm where an injection may be less painful.
All this is helpful to diabetes patients but it does not prevent or cure the disease. At least it does not, like clothing manufacturers, try to conceal the problem of obesity and diabetes.
The prevention of diabetes is an attainable goal, but it would take Draconian measures, or a famine, to cure this epidemic and I don’t see either happening.
But if humans can’t stop eating and see the folly of their ways let’s at least be kind to bears. Bear-proof garbage containers would send them back to the forest hunting for healthy berries and deer and save them from diabetes inducing french fries.
