Type 1 diabetes is on the rise among children, but the exact reason is unclear. The book Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It explores the possible reasons for the acceleration of the disease. The book’s author says Type 1 diabetes is increasing at a rate of about 3% a year , according to an article from U.S. News and World Report.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune cells mistakenly attack its own insulin-producing beta cells, destroying them and the person’s ability to produce insulin. Insulin is needed to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood and people cannot survive without the hormone.
U.S. News and World Report asked author Dan Hurley to discuss the top 5 possible reasons. Each of the reasons assumes the individual’s genetic predisposition to developing the disease. Here are Hurley’s Five:
Accelerated Growth – Children that grow too quickly put extra stress on their body and their organs, essentially triggering their genetic predisposal to diabetes.
Good Day Sunshine – Studies have shown that people living further away from the equator are more likely to develop Type 1 diabetes. They also tend to have lower levels of vitamin D, which is known as the sunshine vitamin, in their bodies. Is there a link?
Cleanliness Is Not Next to Godliness– Being too clean can be a bad thing because it may actually deny us access to specific germs and parasites, therefore making it difficult for us to build up immunity to certain diseases. In fact, researchers are currently exploring the possible use of parasitic worms in the treatment and prevention of certain autoimmune diseases, including diabetes.
Milking It– One theory suggests that feeding a baby cow’s milk within the first six months after birth may affect the child’s immune system and increase their risk of autoimmune diseases, including diabetes. Recent studies have suggested a link between breast feeding and a lower risk for Type 1 diabetes.
Environmental Pollution – There have been numerous studies examining the possible link between diabetes and pollutants, such as toxic waste and pesticides. However, the evidence shows a clearer connection between Type 2 diabetes and pollutants. Such connections are not as clear with Type 1, according to Hurley and the U.S News and World Report article.
A Costly Disease
The Ottawa Citizen June 29, 2010
Keep yourself trim, the doctors always told us, in order to prevent cardiovascular disease. Turns out this was the right advice, but not just for the sake of healthy hearts.... See More
Two million more Canadians are expected to develop diabetes in the next few years, says the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Nine per cent of Canadians will have it by 2017.
The surprise is that the growing incidence of diabetes isn't related to obesity, in the sense of being conspicuously fat. The obesity warnings we all know so well may be the wrong message -- or at least, an incomplete one. Health officials now tell us they don't expect most of the future diabetics to be size XXL. Rather, these patients will be what might be called overweight: not obese by any means, just a little heavy.
This finding is significant because it means that a challenge to our health system is coming out of left field -- that is, from a group that was not identified as the high-priority risk. Now it's true that the very obese remain most likely to develop diabetes, in terms of individual risk. But what matters to society as a whole is that people who are overweight but not obese are far more numerous. The realization that those who are simply carrying a few extra pounds are vulnerable to diabetes has serious implications for the health care system.
The problem is made worse by the widespread but mistaken belief that diabetes is not a particularly serious condition. After all, it can be easily managed with insulin, right?
Wrong. Insulin might help control (though not cure) diabetes in many people, but the disease is still a killer for too many people long before they reach old age. The suffering is horrific, accompanied as it is by blindness and amputations (caused by damage to the circulatory system).
As hospital administrators will testify, diabetes represents an enormous strain on health care budgets because the disease destroys the tiny blood vessels that supply the kidneys. The kidneys slowly stop working, and patients end up being treated with dialysis, a process in which a machine removes a person's blood, cleans up all the waste chemicals that would normally drain away in urine and puts the cleaned blood back in the body.
That takes hours, several times a week, for a lifetime. It often requires hospital space, expensive equipment, and trained staff (though home dialysis is an option for some people).
Health officials point out, correctly, that we just can't put more and more people on dialysis without overloading the hospitals. As more people develop diabetes, we could find ourselves confronting the excruciatingly difficult question of deciding who gets the treatment and who doesn't.
The Canadian Diabetes Association estimates that Canada's economic burden from the disease will be $12.2 billion in 2010, counting both the cost of medical treatments and indirect costs such as lost time from work. The United States National Institutes of Health estimates the annual cost of diabetes in that country is $218 billion (measured in 2007), taking into account as well that millions are known to have the disease but haven't been individually diagnosed.
No wonder doctors now say we need a national prevention strategy, as with AIDS and smoking, to stop our national weight gain.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Now I have to go and buy some more long johns to keep me warm Mike
Insulin was discovered in 1922 by Dr's Banting and Best
The way we test has come a long way but the end results are the same
Not much has changed
We need help
If your not a diabetic don't wait until you are
Please help give a voice to the silent killer
This ride is not for me Its for you Raise your VOICE
88 years of the same old treatment is getting stale
My name is Mike Cole
I am forty eight years of age. I became a "Type One" diabetic at the age of 8 going on 9.I have lived the ups and downs that come with being a diabetic. Living with diabetes for 40 years I have almost lost the fight a few times . I'm tired of fighting as so many others are .Together we can educate all those who we love and care of diabetes. Perhaps more structuring, resources and awareness could be available to diabetics and the public if we could possibly get more involvement of government funding. Many diabetics and public are not aware and don't know how bad and the side effects can be or what to expect. So I'm going to ride across Canada and the United Statesto raise the voice and ask for support for funding of the research and resource centers for educating diabetes.
News clip while on the 2009 Winter ride
http://watch.ctv.ca/news/clip130901#clip130901
Diabetes kills more people every year then Breast Cancer and Aids combined 4 times over. Is the leading cause of death word wide
1 out of 3 children born after the year 2000 will become a Diabetic.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has projected that over one-third of the children born after the year 2000 will develop diabetes sometime during their lifetime. If they happen to be Black, Hispanic, or Native American, the CDC projects that nearly 50% of the children will become diabetic. When you consider that diabetes is the leading cause of amputation, kidney failure, blindness, and neuropathy, the strain this projection will place on our health care system and society in general is tremendous. The answer is encouraging individuals to become proactive in protecting their health by firmly establishing these new, healthier lifestyles that improve insulin sensitivity.
In 2006 3,153,600 people died from Diabetes 6,307,200 became a Diabetic in the same year. In 2007 there was 253 million Diabetics.( New update ). By the year 2025 there will be 800,000,000 cases of Diabetes and IGT world wide if this doesn't scare you it should . Everyday this number grows check your resources on line through Diabetes websites and watch the statistics.
Please do take the time to view the sites and videos which are posted here. You will truly find them all informative. " My goal is a world voice for Diabetes."Mike
Eighty percent of diabetic patients today will die prematurely from a cardiovascular event like a heart attack, stroke, or a ruptured aneurysm. This was true in 1970 and is true today. In spite of all our medication and present treatments for diabetes, we have not been able to change this horrible statistic. Now its true that we are able to decrease the risk of what is referred to as micro-vascular disease like diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy. However, we have not been able to decrease the risk of major cardiovascular disease. Why is this happening ?
You will learn, our arteries begin aging much faster than they should as soon as you develop insulin resistance. It may be 10 to 15 years before you actually develop diabetes. Clinical trials have shown that the day a patient is diagnosed with diabetes 60% of them already have cardiovascular disease. Now that they are diabetic, their arteries will actually begin to age even faster. Physicians are behind the eight ball and are really intervening with their traditional treatments too late
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Info from Ray D.Strand,M.D. Specialist in Nutritional Medicine Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases to affect children. Every day more than 200 children are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, requiring them to take multiple daily insulin shots and monitor the glucose levels in their blood. It is increasing at a rate of 3% each year among children and rising even faster in pre-school children at a rate of 5% per year. Currently, over 500,000 children under the age of 15 live with diabetes.
Diabetes interferes with the way the body processes the sugar glucose, the body's main source of energy. When all is going well, cells absorb glucose from the blood stream after we've eaten and use it as fuel, or pack it away for future use. Insulin, produced by the pancreas, orchestrates the process. With diabetes, the process breaks down, and glucose start to builds up in the blood.
There are three types of diabetes:
- Type 1, usually diagnosed in children and adolescents, is caused when the body can't produce insulin. The body's immune system or environmental factors are believed to trigger Type 1, which accounts for 10 per cent of diabetes.
- Type 2, which accounts for 90 per cent of diabetes, usually begins when the glucose-absorbing cells lose their ability to mop up sugar and it starts to build up in the blood. Overeating, sedentary lifestyles and an aging population are believed to be fuelling the explosion of Type 2, which affects 250 million people worldwide, up from 30 million in 1985.
- Gestational diabetes occurs during pregnancy and increases the risk to both the mother and child of developing Type 2.
- "Pre-diabetes" ( I.G.T) means the body's cells are not responding properly to insulin, and sugar levels in the blood begin to rise. Left unchecked, more tha half of people with pre-diabetes develop full-blown diabetes within eight to 10 years.
Sources: Public Health Agency of Canada, International Diabetes Federation
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