Diabetes is a growing epidemic in today’s world despite the vast array of resources that exist today on how to prevent diabetes, especially for those who do not acquire it genetically.
BBC news reports on the diabetes debacle. New statistics show that every 1 in 11 adults around the world has diabetes.
The World Health Organization recently issued new information about the diabetes epidemic and how widespread it really is. The WHO warns that diabetic cases have nearly quadrupled to 422 million in 2014 from 108 million in 1980.
What are the effects of the high diabetes rate in the world today?
Researchers are saying that it is linked to high blood sugar levels, which are a major killer; it is connected to 3.7 million deaths around the world each year.
Health officials are saying the numbers will continue to increase unless ‘drastic action’ is immediately taken. “The report lumps both type 1 and type 2 diabetes together, but the surge in cases is predominantly down to type 2 - the form closely linked to poor lifestyle,” according to BBC news.
Health officials are saying that as the world's waistlines have ballooned – ‘with one-in-three people now overweight’, so too has the number of diabetes patients. Type 2 diabetes is preventable with exercise and a healthy diet; experts are saying that people should have been more vigilant about protecting themselves from acquiring this disease. They are also emphasizing the importance of doctors warning patients who are at risk of the fact that they are at risk and how they need to change their lifestyle in order to keep from becoming another diabetes casualty.
Dr. Etienne Krug, the WHO official in charge of leading efforts against diabetes, told the BBC, “Diabetes is a silent disease, but it is on an unrelenting march that we need to stop. We can stop it, we know what needs to be done, but we cannot let it evolve like it does because it has a huge impact on people's health, on families and on society.” She further emphasized the way failing to control levels of sugar in the blood has deadly consequences.
What effects does it have exactly?
High blood sugar actually triples the threat of a heart attack and leaves people a whopping 20 times more likely to have a leg amputated. It also automatically increases the danger of having a stroke, kidney failure, blindness and complications in pregnancy. Diabetes is the eighth biggest killer and responsible for one and a half million deaths every year and most of these deaths happen before the patient turns 70.
