Diabetes Flashcards
Know diabetes info stats
Type 1 diabetes, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, accounts for what percent of all cases?
10 percent
Type 2 diabetes is chronic or environmental, and it’s especially prevalent in populations that overconsume hyperprocessed foods, like ours. What percent of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes?
About a third of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Although treatable, it’s uncurable.
How does Type 2 diabetes work?
It causes your cells to fail to retrieve glucose from the blood, either because your pancreas isn’t producing enough insulin or the body’s cells ignore that insulin.
Put as simply as possible (in case your eyes glaze over as quickly as mine when it comes to high school biology), insulin “calls” your cells, asking them to take glucose from the bloodstream: “Yoo-hoo. Pick this stuff up!”
When the insulin calls altogether too often — as it does when you drink sugar-sweetened beverages and repeatedly eat junk food — the cells are overwhelmed, and say, “Leave me alone.” They become resistant. This makes the insulin even more insistent and, to make matters worse, all those elevated insulin levels are bad for your blood vessels.
How might Alzheimer’s be related to diabetes?
Let’s connect the dots: We know that the American diet is a fast track not only to obesity but to Type 2 diabetes and other preventable, non-communicable diseases, which now account for more deaths worldwide than all other causes combined.
We also already know that people with diabetes are at least twice as likely to get Alzheimer’s, and that obesity alone increases the risk of impaired brain function.
What’s new is the thought that while diabetes doesn’t “cause” Alzheimer’s, they have the same root: an over consumption of those “foods” that mess with insulin’s many roles. (Genetics have an effect on susceptibility, as they appear to with all environmental diseases.) “Sugar is clearly implicated,” says Dr. de la Monte, “but there could be other factors as well, including nitrates in food.”
Has the rate of Type 2 diabetes increased in America?
It has nearly tripled in the last 40 years.
How much more likely are people with diabetes to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s?
twice
Since 1970 diabetes rates in the US have
more than tripled
Added sugars have increase how much from 1980 to 2010 in the US?
12 lbs from 120lbs. to 132 lbs.
