CDC: Diabetes on the rise
Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes -- 7 million of whom don't even know it -- according to new data out today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new figures mark an increase from 2008, when the agency found 23.6 million Americans with diabetes, nearly 8 percent of the population. The disease, characterized by high blood sugar, puts people at risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and kidney failure. It's the seventh leading cause of death in the nation.
The CDC also found an increase for what can be a precursor to diabetes, known as prediabetes. Some 79 million adults in the U.S. have prediabetes in which blood sugar is elevated, just not to the threshold considered for a diabetes diagnosis, the CDC reports. Prediabetes increases a person's risk for not only diabetes, but also stroke and heart disease.
The findings suggest a real increase in cases as well as more people living longer with the disease. Changes in how testing is recorded could also play a role, the report stated.
Comments
The term borderline diabetes should be obsolete. There is no such condition. That is the equivalent of borderline pregnancy. Either you've got diabetes or you don't. If you have pre diabetes you are as jeopardized as when you have diabetes. Same damage in both conditions. Exercise is the only antidote. Stop eating too much at one sitting. Divide your calories in small frequent meals and don't overwhelm your pancreas. This is a disease as deadly as cancer if not more--it should be renamed metabolic cancer. The incidence of cancer is very high in diabetics as it is in the obese. Both conditions cause an increase in inflammatory substances and in diabetes there is an increase in growth factors of all sorts. The growth factors are what lead to proliferative retinopathy in the eyes and to cancers--particularly pancreatic cancer.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 26, 2011 4:16 PM