Don’t Become A Diabetes Statistic
02 Sep 2009
When a man applied for a job at the railway station he was asked, “Suppose you saw a train coming from the east at 100 miles an hour. Then noticed a train coming from the west at 100 mph. The trains were both on the same track and just a quarter of a mile apart. What would you do?” The man replied, “I’d run and get my brother.” “Why would you ever do that at such a critical time?” he was asked. The man said simply, “Because my brother’s never seen a train wreck.”
Today, diabetes and its complications make the perfect medical train wreck. It’s destroying tens of thousands of lives and will eventually decimate our health care system. Every 45 seconds a new diabetic is diagnosed in North America. Can you imagine the hue and cry if there were a new case of Legionaire’s Disease, SARS or measles every 45 seconds? A dozen Royal Commissions would be formed and millions of taxpayers dollars made available to fight such epidemics.
50 years ago, 90 percent of diabetes was the result of inheriting bad genes (Type 1 diabetes). Now 90 percent is due to obesity (Type2)! Five percent of North Americans are diabetic. One child in five born today will become a diabetic and half of them will die from a heart attack.. The dollars required to care for these patients is mind-boggling.
Not many people know that aboriginal patients with diabetes in Manitoba account for 30 percent of the province’s hospital admissions. One-third of those on renal dialysis in Manitoba are aboriginal. 90 percent of leg amputations are done on aboriginal patients. And they’re also 25 X more prone to blindness. This is an appalling public health disaster. But there are ways to prevent becoming a diabetes statistic and suffering the consequences of this disease.
First, everyone must get “scared as hell” about gaining weight. Don’t believe that heart disease and cancer are the number one killers. Sheer fat is killing more and more people. Excess fat sets the stage for heart attack, hypertension, some cancers and complications during surgery and childbirth to name a few.
Next be “sacred as hell” about packaged foods. Since most of us are no longer down on the farm, packaged foods have now become a way of life. So develop the habit of never buying packaged food without looking at the label. I’ll say that again “Look at the label”, because it tells you the number of calories per serving and the servings are small. So the devil is in the fine print. Most people need about 2,000 calories a day, so count calories.
Also get “scared as hell” about the calories not in packaged foods, the 14 teaspoons of sugar present in a piece of cherry pie, eight teaspoons of sugar in a soft drink. I’m sure readers would conclude I needed a psychiatrist if poured this amount of sugar into a glass of water. But this is what kids and others have done for years. And how many families realize some morning cereals contain 50 percent sugar? I’ve told my grandchildren it’s safer to eat the box!
Be “scared as hell” if you don’t step on the bathroom scale every day. Believing you can gauge your weight by the fit of your clothes is a good way to be part of the train wreck.
It’s naive to expect that the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes will suddenly end. That would need either a famine, a major public health assault on obesity or millions of people getting “scared as hell”. I don’t see this happening.
It’s also frightening that there’s no cure in sight for this disease. So it’s vital that patients with Type 2 diabetes take control of their blood sugar to slow down the complications of this disease. Studies show that 50 percent of diabetes patients never achieve normal levels of blood sugar. So patients must realize that there’s no such thing as a “touch” of extra blood sugar. And this means working with a doctor to achieve this end.
