One Third Of Americans Are Headed For Diabetes, And They Don't Even Know It

One third of Americans are headed for diabetes, and they don't even know it

One third of Americans may be on their way to developing full-blown type 2 diabetes, and most of them don't even know it.
A recent report from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that more than 84 million Americans, or roughly one-third of the population, have prediabetes, a condition marked by higher-than-normal blood sugar. Of that group, 90 percent aren't aware they have the condition.
The primary risk factors for type 2 diabetes are genetics and lifestyle — excess weight, obesity and lack of exercise contribute to this alarming medical trend. "People with prediabetes who don't change their lifestyle are at a much higher risk of developing heart disease and stroke and can develop type 2 diabetes within five years if left untreated," said William T. Cefalu, MD, chief scientific, medical & mission officer of the American Diabetes Association.
The health risks go beyond heart disease and stroke. As diabetes worsens over time, blindness, kidney disease and lower-limb amputation are also major health risks. Diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States in 2015, according to the CDC. This population of diabetes "ticking time bombs" is particularly alarming, because in many cases type 2 diabetes can be avoided, simply by leading a healthy lifestyle. Type 2 diabetes is often progressive, and within 10 years of diagnosis, 50 percent of individuals need to use insulin to control their blood glucose levels, according to the ADA.
More than 30 million Americans — 9.4 percent of the U.S. population — are already battling diabetes, ac Continue reading

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Two diet drinks a day could double the risk of diabetes, study finds

Two fizzy drinks a day could double the risk of diabetes - even if they are diet versions - a Swedish study has found.
Research by the Karolinska Institute on 2,800 adults found that those who consumed at least two 200ml servings of soft drinks daily were 2.4 times as likely to suffer from a form of type 2 diabetes.
Many fizzy drinks are sold in 330ml cans, meaning that one and a half cans would be enough to double the risk.
Those who drank a litre of such drinks saw a 10-fold rise in their chance of suffering from the condition.
The increased risks were the same regardless of whether the drinks were sugary or artificially sweetened, the research published in the European Journal of Endocrinology found.
Researchers said the sugary drinks may have induced insulin resistance, triggering the cases of diabetes.
The artificial sweeteners in the diet drinks may stimulate and distort appetite, they said, increasing food intake, and encouraging a sweet tooth. Such sweeteners might also affect microbes in the gut leading to glucose intolerance.
The research was a retrospective study, which relied on participants to recall their diet habits.
Josefin Edwall Löfvenborg, lead author, said soft drinks might influence glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, leading to the increased risk of latent auto-immune diabetes, a form of type 2 diabetes.
“In this study we were surprised by the increased risk in developing autoimmune diabetes by drinking soft drinks,” he said. We next plan on investigating what could counter this risk.”
More research was needed into the impact of diet dri Continue reading

Half Of Adults In The U.S. Have Diabetes Or Pre-Diabetes, Study Finds

A national wake up call to intensify efforts to control the obesity crisis with added focus on diet, exercise and monitoring blood sugar
According to a study published online in JAMA today, nearly 50% of adults living in the U.S. have diabetes or pre-diabetes, a condition where a person already has elevated blood sugar and is at risk to develop diabetes.
Diabetes, a condition where blood sugar is elevated, may reflect lack of production of insulin to lower blood sugar (Type 1) or insulin resistance (Type 2), generally the result of obesity, poor diet or lack of exercise leading to the metabolic syndrome.
Diabetes is a costly disease in the U.S, racking up an estimated 245 billion in 2012, related to consumption and utilization of health care resources as well as lost productivity, according to the researchers in the study. Diabetes can damage blood vessels, the eyes and kidneys, also resulting in poor wound healing and devastating soft tissue infections. And nearly 71,000 persons die annually due to complications associated with diabetes, based on recent statistics from the American Diabetes Association.
Investigators in the study defined undiagnosed diabetes as those persons having a fasting blood sugar greater than 126 mg/dl or a hemoglobin A1C > 6.5 %, a measure of long term glucose control. Pre-diabetes was defined as having a fasting blood sugar 100-125 mg/dl, or a hemoglobin A1C of 5.7-6.4%.
Researchers evaluated 5,000 patients who were part of a national survey designed to assess the prevalence of diabetes and explore trends in different subgroups and ethnicities.
Re Continue reading

Type 2 diabetes IS reversible: Eating just 600 calories a day for 8 weeks can save the lives of millions of sufferers

Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by going on a low calorie diet, new research shows.
Consuming just 600 calories a day for eight weeks can save the lives of millions of sufferers of the preventable condition.
Newcastle University scientists said that excess calories lead to a fatty liver, which causes the liver to produce too much glucose.
The excess fat is then passed to the pancreas, which causes the insulin-producing cells to fail and thus causing diabetes.
Losing less than one gram of fat from the pancreas can re-start insulin production, reversing type 2 diabetes, the researchers found.
This reversal of diabetes remains possible for at least ten years after the onset of the condition, lead author Professor Roy Taylor said.
Such a diet helps bring about 15kg of weight loss on average. Weight loss has long been known to help reverse the condition.
It's down to the patients
Professor Taylor, who has spent almost four decades studying the condition, said: 'I think the real importance of this work is for the patients themselves.
'Many have described to me how embarking on the low calorie diet has been the only option to prevent what they thought - or had been told - was an inevitable decline into further medication and further ill health because of their diabetes.
'By studying the underlying mechanisms we have been able to demonstrate the simplicity of type 2 diabetes.'
What did the study find?
The study showed results within just a week of starting the diet. It caused a profound fall in insulin sensitivity.
Fasting blood sugar levels, of which diabetes patients have signifi Continue reading

New Diabetes Test Could Be More Accurate

For more than 400 million people with diabetes around the world, blood testing is a routine part of managing their disease.
Those tests, however, aren’t always accurate for a variety of reasons.
A team of researchers thinks there might be a better way.
The researchers say they have devised a new method for estimating blood sugar levels that can reduce errors by more than 50 percent.
The researchers published their findings today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
In their study, they combined a mathematical model of hemoglobin glycation in red blood cells with large data sets of patient glucose measurements. It indicated that the age of red blood cells is a major indicator of A1C variation because hemoglobin accumulates more sugar over time.
When they controlled the age of cells and tested it on more than 200 people with diabetes, they say the error rate went from 1 in 3 to 1 in 10.
One of the researchers, Dr. John Higgins, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told Healthline these calculations can be used to correct the test results that people with diabetes now get at their regular checkups.
It can also provide an estimate of the A1C result for patients using continuous glucose monitors.
Essentially, it has the potential to be the new gold standard in diabetic testing, Higgins said.
Read more: Prediabetes: To screen or not to screen? »
What’s wrong with current tests
The current gold standard for diabetes screening is the glycohemoglobin test (HbA1c).
It is a general gauge of diabetes control that specifies an average blood glucose level over Continue reading