Halting the spread of diabetes is bigger than just the medical care alone according to the NY Times.

Diabetes exploded after the 1980’s food pyramid suggested that low-fat foods are best and manufacturers made many foods low-fat by adding sugar.  There are also other likely contributing factors such as more sedentary lifestyles.   Still, one in 7 Americans is now a type 2 diabetic which is an alarming statistic.

My son developed this by eating the wrong foods including drinks loaded with sugars and being sedentary.   The disease was controlled best when he worked physically at UPS moving boxes on a daily basis and then it was resolved when he had bariatric surgery.

It has been well established that type 2 diabetes can be reduced through proper food intake, weight loss, and exercise.   Researchers are not understanding that there is no drug that can undo type 2 diabetes. In the case of most dietary diseases, the way we eat, the types of foods we eat, our environment, and other things will all determine if we get or beat diabetes type 2.

Experts are now rethinking the current model of taking a drug or a medication and instead coming up with a multi-faceted model to battle, resolve, and ultimately prevent the disease going forward.  Check out the article in the NY Times.

Medical Care Alone Won’t Halt the Spread of Diabetes, Scientists Say

Now experts are calling for walkable communities, improved housing, and access to health care and better food, particularly in minority communities.

By Roni Caryn Rabin Oct. 5, 2022

Over the past 50 years, medical advances have led to a more sophisticated understanding of the causes of Type 2 diabetes and to an abundance of new tools for managing it. But better treatments have done little to stem the rise of the disease.

One in seven American adults has Type 2 diabetes now, up from one in 20 in the 1970s. Many teenagers are developing what was once considered to be a disease of older people; 40 percent of young adults will be diagnosed with it at some point in their lives.

Researchers who study Type 2 diabetes have reached a stark conclusion: There is no device, no drug powerful enough to counter the effects of poverty, pollution, stress, a broken food system, cities that are hard to navigate on foot and inequitable access to health care, particularly in minority communities.

“Our entire society is perfectly designed to create Type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Dean Schillinger, a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco. “We have to disrupt that.”

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