March 28, 2023 is Diabetes Alert Day! And you know what that means: it is time to take another look at your risk for diabetes. Each year, the American Diabetes Association observes Diabetes Alert Day on the fourth Tuesday in March. While you may think of diabetes as something that only affects adults, it actually affects children as well. In fact, 1 out of every 11 children has been diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes by age 10. This one-day “wake-up call” focuses on the seriousness of diabetes and the importance of observing your risk. It’s also a day when people with diabetes, their families, friends, and caregivers can step back and think about what they can do to manage their condition and prevent diabetes complications.
The first known mention of diabetes symptoms can be dated back to 1552 B.C. in Egypt, where physician Hesy-Ra listed frequent urination as a symptom of a disease that also caused both emaciation and the production of urine that attracted ants. In 150 A.D., Greek physician Arateus described the disease we now know to be diabetes as “the melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.” The presence of ‘sweetness’ in the urine leading to the disease being named ‘Diabetes Mellitus’ in 1675.
It was in the 18th and 19th centuries when physicians began to realize that dietary changes could help in the regulation of diabetes. Elliott Joslin published “The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus” in 1916, recommending a fasting diet and regular exercise for blood sugar control. Frederick Banting, a Canadian physician, was the first to think of using insulin to treat diabetes in 1920.
Today, insulin is used to treat type 1 diabetes. Other medical advancements have allowed patients to check their blood sugar levels at home and precisely regularize them using insulin, medication, exercise, and diet. Diabetes currently affects about 34.3 million Americans, out of which 7.2 million don’t even know they suffer from the illness. To make matters worse, approximately 88 million people have prediabetes, a condition characterized by high blood sugar levels that aren’t high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
The American Diabetes Alert Day was first observed in 1988 to inform the American public about the disease and its risk of development.
Over 7 million people with diabetes are undiagnosed, and 1 in 3 American adults is at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. But here’s the kicker: the majority of them don’t even know it. The test you need is right here—it just takes 60 seconds of your time. If you’re concerned about your risk for type 2 diabetes and want to know if you have prediabetes, try this Risk Test by the American Diabetes Association.
Learn how to keep your risk low by scheduling regular check-ups with your healthcare provider and taking healthy steps toward preventing or delaying the onset of type 2 diabetes. If you don’t have a regular health care provider, don’t have insurance, can’t afford a deductible, or have the time to go to an office, there are affordable and accessible options to learn your status.
Diabetes is a disease that can be prevented.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 9 in 10 cases of type 2 diabetes are preventable by making some lifestyle changes. These same changes can also lower the chances of developing heart disease and some cancers. The key to prevention can be boiled down to five words: Stay lean and stay active. But what does that mean? Below are some tips to help you stay on track, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health:
Excess weight is the single most important cause of type 2 diabetes. Being overweight increases the chances of developing type 2 diabetes sevenfold. Being obese makes you 20 to 40 times more likely to develop diabetes than someone with a healthy weight. Losing weight can help if your weight is above the healthy-weight range. Losing 7-10% of your current weight can cut your chances of developing type 2 diabetes in half.
Inactivity promotes type 2 diabetes. Working your muscles more often and making them work harder improves their ability to use insulin and absorb glucose. This puts less stress on your insulin-making cells. So trade some of your sit-time for fit-time.
Lengthy bouts of hot, sweaty exercise aren’t necessary to reap this benefit. Findings from the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study suggest that walking briskly for a half hour every day reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 30%. More recently, The Black Women’s Health Study reported similar diabetes-prevention benefits for brisk walking of more than 5 hours per week. This amount of exercise has a variety of other benefits as well. And even greater cardiovascular and other advantages can be attained by more and more intense exercise.
Television watching appears to be an especially-detrimental form of inactivity: Every two hours you spend watching TV instead of pursuing something more active increases the chances of developing diabetes by 20%; it also increases the risk of heart disease (15%) and early death (13%). The more television people watch, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese, and this seems to explain part of the TV viewing-diabetes link. The unhealthy diet patterns associated with TV watching may also explain some of this relationship.
Four dietary changes can have a big impact on the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Add type 2 diabetes to the long list of health problems linked with smoking. Smokers are roughly 50% more likely to develop diabetes than nonsmokers, and heavy smokers have an even higher risk.
Evidence has consistently linked moderate alcohol consumption with a reduced risk of heart disease. The same may be true for type 2 diabetes. Moderate amounts of alcohol—up to a drink a day for women, up to two drinks a day for men—increase the efficiency of insulin at getting glucose inside cells. And some studies indicate that moderate alcohol consumption decreases the risk of type 2 diabetes, but excess alcohol intake actually increases the risk. If you already drink alcohol, the key is to keep your consumption in the moderate range, as higher amounts of alcohol could increase diabetes risk. If you don’t drink alcohol, there’s no need to start—you can get the same benefits by losing weight, exercising more, and changing your eating patterns.
Type 2 diabetes is largely preventable by taking several simple steps: keeping weight under control, exercising more, eating a healthy diet, and not smoking. Yet it is clear that the burden of behavior change cannot fall entirely on individuals. Families, schools, worksites, healthcare providers, communities, media, the food industry, and government must work together to make healthy choices easy choices.
It’s not enough to just know where you stand. Encourage the people around you to assess their risk levels as well. Help them avail the resources they might need to understand the topic further. If you can, donate a few dollars to organizations that work to improve the lives of individuals with diabetes. Your contribution will assist in the advancement of research, outreach, and information campaigns.
Sources:
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/community-health-outreach/diabetes-alert-day