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Diabetes
TYPE 2 DIABETES, the most common form, often accompanies obesity. As
we, as a nation, continue to gain weight, our rate of diabetes spirals out
of control. In the eight years from 1990 to 1998, the incidence of diabe-
tes increased 33%.1 Over 8% of American adults are diabetic, and over
150,000 young people have the disease. That translates to 16 million
Americans. The scariest figure? One-third of those people with diabetes
don't yet know that they have it.^2
You know the situation is serious when our children, at the age of
puberty, start falling prey to the form of diabetes usually reserved for
adults over forty. One newspaper recently illustrated the epidemic with
the story of a girl who weighed 350 pounds at the age of fifteen, had the
"adult-onset" form of diabetes and was injecting insulin into her body
three times a day. 3
What is diabetes, why should we care about it and how do we stop it
from happening to us?
TWO FACES OF THE SAME DEVILAlmost all cases of diabetes are either Type 1 or Type 2. Type 1 develops
in children and adolescents, and thus is sometimes referred to as juve-
nile-onset diabetes. This form accounts for 5% to 10% of all diabetes
cases. Type 2, which accounts for 90% to 95% of all cases, used to occur
primarily in adults age forty and up, and thus was called adult-onset
diabetes.^2 But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are
Type 2 diabetes,4 the age-specific names are being dropped, and the two
forms of diabetes are simply referred to as Type 1 and Type 2 .4
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