Diabetes is a problem we’ll be facing as a society for a long time. Though its prevalence in US adults is leveling off, it’s leveling off much higher than it should.
A study done on adults from 2011-2012 found that 14 percent of adults had diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes, where 38 percent of adults had diagnosed or undiagnosed prediabetes.
Those are pretty high numbers.
If you don’t know what prediabetes is, it’s having blood sugar levels that are higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
Prediabetes puts you at much higher risk for diabetes, especially if it goes undiagnosed.
One third of Americans with diabetes don’t know they have it. Prediabetes is even lesser known. Prediabetes is easily treatable when it’s caught early, with lifestyle changes like exercising and losing weight.
Diabetes is treatable too, but it’s only treatable when it’s diagnosed.
The study looked at prevalence of diabetes across different populations, too. Diabetes among white populations came in at 11 percent, with black, Asian, and Hispanic populations at somewhere around 21-22 percent.
It’s not all bad news. The increase of diabetes came with the increase of obesity in America. Now that obesity rates have started leveling off, it looks like diabetes rates are following suit.
Of course, if we continue with changes in our attitudes towards obesity, such as identifying those who are at risk, obese, or diabetic and helping them instead of ostracizing them, there’s a better chance of lowering diabetes rates.
