Our Lax Lifestyle Choices Are Killing Us

“It’s a constant balancing act. People living without the disease cannot even begin to contemplate the constant effort it takes for people living with the disease — even in the middle of the night,” Jewels Doskicz, a registered nurse from Arizona, told LifeZette.

Doskicz knows how tough managing diabetes can be, not only because she is a nurse, but because she has type 1 diabetes herself. Besides keeping track of her own blood sugar levels, she must use continuously monitor readings for her daughter, who also has the disease.

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On a day-to-day basis, managing diabetes demands a great deal of attention. Any time someone with diabetes eats, food has to be managed with insulin. Diabetics may check their blood sugar up to 10 times a day.

If you don’t monitor blood sugar levels, the neglect can kill you — or at the very least, lead to devastating complications that include blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, even amputation. People with diabetes are 10 times likelier to have their feet and legs removed than those without the disease.

Genetic and autoimmune components make some people more susceptible to both types of the disease, said Doskicz.

But health experts will say that type 2 diabetes is largely preventable by the right lifestyle choices. We are simply not making those choices.

New reports come out nearly every day that show the number of diabetics is rising. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported a nearly four-fold increase in the number of diabetics globally. The latest statistics show there were 422 million diabetics in 2014 — up from 108 million in 1980.

A 2015 International Diabetes Federation report found that one in 11 adults has diabetes.

In 2012, 1.5 million people across the globe died from diabetes. Elevated blood glucose levels linked to diabetes were responsible for an additional 2.2 million deaths that year.

Of the 9.1 percent of Americans with the disease, the WHO reports that 69.6 percent are overweight and 35 percent are obese. It adds in its most recent report that changes “in the way people eat, move and live” is to blame for the increase.

[lz_bulleted_list title=”Economic Burden of Type 2 Diabetes” source=”http://www.cfah.org”]29.1 million in U.S. are diabetic|1.4 million new cases each year|86 million considered prediabetic|$176 billion in direct medical costs|$124,700 over a man’s lifetime|$130,800 over a woman’s lifetime[/lz_bulleted_list]

Health officials added that it is vital to change global “eating and physical activity habits,” especially early in life when behavioral patterns are formed.

Dr. Caroline Apovian, vice president of the Obesity Society, doesn’t necessarily disagree, but said the reason numbers have gone up is less about choices that people make and more about social issues.

“The people who are suffering the most from the disease of obesity and subsequently type 2 diabetes are the less educated, poorer and more vulnerable populations that must rely on the cheaper food we have produced,” she told LifeZette. Apovian added that people would change the way they lived if they could.

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“Nobody wants to be obese and unhealthy. Unfortunately the default in this country and elsewhere is to eat cheap, bad food and do little physical activity,” she said, pointing out that obesity is considered a disease, unlike years ago when it was not.

“It’s not a matter of people not taking care of themselves. It’s not that the type 2 diabetic isn’t trying. They all try,” Apovian said. “Most of them try to change their lifestyle.”

Dr. Goodarz Danaei, an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, agreed.

“It should not be doctors but health policy planners who should care most about these numbers,” he told LifeZette.

Kelly Johnston (not her real name), a type 2 diabetic from New Jersey, said she doesn’t feel frustrated by people who don’t have the disease not doing all they can to prevent it.

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“What’s more frustrating is seeing other type 2 diabetics not doing everything in their power to get it under control,” she said.

Knowing that type 2 diabetes can lead to increased incidences of heart disease and complications with healing, that’s a “pretty good incentive” to take care of themselves, she said. People who know they have signs of prediabetes should do all they can to “nip it in the bud.”

Johnston was diagnosed about 13 years ago. After her diagnosis, other family members were tested and learned they had it, too.

“I’ve gone through a lot of different combinations of therapy, plus two pregnancies as a type 2 diabetic,” Johnston added, who is using healthy eating, exercise and five prescriptions to manage her disease.

She checks her blood sugar twice a day — more if something feels off, she says. “I don’t find the testing part all that intrusive, but it’d be nice to not have to worry about what food choices I’m making,” she said.

“Exercise is part of the prescription,” she told LifeZette. “Without that, I’d have to be on stronger doses of some of my meds.”

“The difficulty is that it’s a journey, not just a simple fix,” Kelly added, saying diabetics must be vigilant in treating the disease.

Health officials agree, but they say more needs to be done to raise awareness that this is a largely preventable disease, one the world needs to start taking seriously.