Diabetes Timebomb

Not only do we have 2.9-million adolescents at risk for diabetes, if the recent data published in the June issue of Diabetes Care is correct, 33% of adults - 1 in 3 - already have diabetes or are on the path to developing diabetes with impaired fasting glucose levels!

As reported in Forbes, "The number of Americans diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has now topped 19 million, and a new study says a third of adults with the disease don't even know they have it. The researchers found that another 26 percent of adults had "impaired fasting glucose," a precursor to diabetes.So, if you add that together with the 9.3 percent of people with diabetes, that means that fully one-third of the adult population -- 73 million Americans -- have diabetes or they may be on their way to getting it," said lead researcher Catherine Cowie, director of the diabetes epidemiology program at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases."

These numbers are downright frightening!

In the Forbes article, Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine said "My hope is that we will do what needs to be done to make healthful diets and activity patterns more accessible to all, and diabetes a bit less so."

In other words, healthcare professionals like Dr. Katz aren't considering the possibility that their notion of a "healthful diet" is a contributing factor to these numbers! Dr. Katz is well known for his stance on the low-fat, carbohydrate rich diet - to consider any other approach is a public health threat!

The public health threat is a diet rich with carbohydrates - excessive carbohydrates - which directly and progressively impair the metabolism. The smoke-and-mirrors attempt to convince Americans to continue eating high-carbohydrate diets has to stop. It doesn't matter if the carbohydrate is simple or complex - excess is still excess! And the definition of excess is very simple - the state or an instance of surpassing usual, proper, or specified limits.

Whether simple or complex, all carbohydrates (with the exception of fiber) are converted to blood glucose which requires insulin to shuttle to the cells for energy. Once the amount available is exceeds what the body knows it needs in the coming hours the excess is shuttled to glycogen and body fat. Eat again and repeat. Eat again and repeat.

But we're told the problem isn't too many carbohydrates. Nope - we're told we eat too much fat...gotta watch the fat, gotta lower consumption of fat, gotta stop eating those foods rich with fat. If only Americans would stop eating so much darned fat they'd not get fat and diabetic. [note sarcasm]

Too much fat with excessive carbohydrate - deadly combination. You'll get no arguement from me that eating a steady diet with a lot of fat and a lot of carbohydrate will kill you. Slowly. Painfully.

The problem isn't our fat intake. It's our carbohydrate consumption - it's excessive. Our metabolism is designed for us to eat quality protein, good fat and even some carbohydrate. But we're like drunken sailors binging ourselves silly at every opportunity we find - the indulgence isn't alcohol, but carbohydrates! And just like the body cannot tolerate excessive alcohol consumption over time, it also cannot tolerate excessive carbohydrates over time!

The solution isn't reducing fat and eating more carbohydrate - it's the opposite...reducing the carbohydrate content of our diet and favoring the best quality carbohydrate foods out there - non-starchy vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and some fruits. Eat a wide variety of quality protein and choose your fats well and you have a diet designed for your metabolism.

With one-in-three adults now at risk for or already diagnoised with diabetes, and 2.8-million adolescents at risk, we must set aside the dogma and get down to the data and stop this epidemic! We can do it - we have the evidence - it's been staring us in the face for decades! Are we going to truly take an evidence-based approach now and stop this madness, or are we going to continue down the path of our own destruction?