Obesity and elevated blood sugar levels result - diabetes

The average American family should be concerned with a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: the rate of new cases of type-2 diabetes has increased by 90 percent in just 10 years, and this could be due largely to enlarged overweight and obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

According to the CDC, new cases of type-2 diabetes diagnosed in the period 2005 to 2007 reached 9.1 per 1,000 people, which is almost double or 90 percent more than the 4.8 per 1,000 people recorded in the period 1995 to 1997.

This sharp increase directly reflects the huge expansion in obesity incidence. Experts say obesity is one of the primary causes of elevated blood sugar levels, which lead to diabetes.

Approximately 23.6 million adults and children (8 percent of the population) in the United States have diabetes. Yet, nearly 25 percent of them do not know they already have the disease. More than 90 percent of these people have type-2 diabetes.

Diabetes incidence is highest in the South, at 27.3 percent. But other regions are not too far behind: the Midwest has 26.5 percent; the Northeast, 24.4 percent; and the West, 23.1 percent.

If the country is to cut the incidence of type-2 diabetes, the key to achieving that is to reverse the burgeoning tide of the overweight and obesity epidemic. People who are at risk for diabetes can either delay or even prevent the onset of disease by losing weight, getting more exercise and eating healthy food.

The message from this may be that American families have to effect changes in their lifestyles and induce every member of the family to start doing those things that do good to them.

It is not necessary to become thin to reduce the risk for this debilitating disease. There are studies on people at high risk for the disease which prove that the chances of diabetes can be cut by 58 percent over three years by achieving two simple things:

* Reduce your body weight by 5-10 percent.
* Engage in moderate physical activity for only 30 minutes, 5 days a week. This is less time than you spend surfing the Internet.

If the increasing trend in diabetes continues, the implications are ominous for the future generations. It could mean that by 2048 the entire adult population of the United States would be overweight or obese. The cost of caring for a sick and obese population is unimaginable.

Even as it took 10 years for diabetes rates to increase nearly twofold, it took only 6 years, from 2001 to 2007, for the cost of diabetes-treatment drugs to double. Yet, even at much higher cost, the newer drugs have not yet proved to be more effective in treating the disease.

Overweight and obesity and the resulting diabetes are posing dangers to the American family. The threat will only worsen unless people resolve to do something about it.