"Staggering" level of diabetes now worldwide

Glucometer measuring a diabetic level of glucose in the blood.

     The International Diabetes Federation met two weeks ago to document current cases of diabetes and what unified proposals they agreed upon to recommend to last week's UN meeting.  This federation represents associations from 160 countries, all of whom are finding ever more increasing and concerning numbers of diabetics in their healthcare systems (information from their symposium may be found here).

     So what's the current picture? There are now an estimated 366 million people with diabetes (data combines types 1 and 2).  Their total estimated yearly financial impact on healthcare systems is $465 billion.  Annually.  That's a huge number of people and a huge financial impact- both on larger systems and on a personal level.

     To put this number into perspective,  there are 54 million more diabetics in the world than the entire U.S. population combined.  Although this is far from an American problem, many chronic non-communicable diseases rise in countries in proportion to their adoption of industrialized (American) culture and food (diabetes, heart disease and cancer are a few).

     Type 2 diabetes has been around for some time but has been rapidly growing from the 174 million diabetics estimated worldwide 30 years ago.  What was at one time termed "Adult Onset Diabetes" can now be found affecting grade-school children.  Type 1 or "Juvenile Onset Diabetes" was a rare disease to my knowledge as a child, and I knew of no children with Type 2.  I'm thinking that this is not the case with today's children.

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How many Happy Meals does it take to develop diabetes? I'm not sure.

     So where does this all end? Personal choices, government choices and companies' influence impacts all our lives.  Whether it's diabetes, cancer, lung disease, an autoimmune disease or some other chronic non-communicable disease, it's a long and difficult path towards continual improvement of one's health.  Our modern medical establishment it not set up to optimally serve people in a preventative and health-supporting manner, so check out what the Naturopathic profession can do for you if you have one of these or a similar concern.