"The truth is that obesity and being overweight (from eating too much of anything: sugar, protein, carbohydrates, or fat) is a direct cause of diabetes, '' writes Dr. Bright-Ellington, who trained at the Cambridge Hospital of Harvard Medical School. "Diabetes is a disease that results from the body's inability to process or produce insulin. Insulin is the hormone that converts sugar and carbohydrates in food into energy.''
Today more than ever it is dire that African Americans know the facts about diabetes, a potentially fatal disease. About 2.7 million or 11.4 percent of all African Americans ages 20 or older have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA). But one-third of them do not know it.
African Americans with diabetes are at increased risk for heart disease, stroke and other macrovascular complications. Other complications of diabetes include blindness, kidney disease, and amputations.Diabetes is the fifth deadliest disease in the United States, and it has no cure. The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 2002 was estimated to be $132 billion, or one out of every 10 health care dollars spent in the United States, the ADA says.
In her book, Dr. Bright-Ellington delivers strong medicine in small doses about some of the most important health issues facing the black community today, which is why she addresses diabetes in Chapter 2. Look for weekly excerpts from the informative book here on the AOL Black Voices Wellness blog. In Chapter 1 she addressed the importance of finding a primary care physician.
Diabetes is usually classified as either Type 1, also known as juvenile diabetes, or Type 2, also called adult-onset diabetes, she writes. In Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas has completely lost the ability to make insulin. Although, the cause of both types of the diabetes has multiple genetic (inherited) and environmental (lifestyle) factors, being overweight and lack of exercise play the biggest roles in developing Type 2 diabetes.
Contrary to popular belief, diabetics usually do not die from dangerously high sugars; most die from complications of high sugars such as heart attacks and strokes.
Aggressive treatment of diabetes to keep sugars near normal, along with certain cholesterol-lowering medicines, is crucial to saving the life of a diabetic, she writes. Regular cardiovascular exercise...is a vital part of controlling blood sugars in diabetics and people at high risk of developing diabetes.
Moral of the Story:
If you are overweight and or have a parent or grand parent with adult-onset diabetes, you can delay or even prevent the onset of diabetes with regular cardiovascular exercise (walking or running on treadmill, elliptical, or stair-master machine, or biking) three to five days a week. If you haven't been exercising regularly, get an OK from your doctor first, then slowly work up to an exercise time goal of thirty minutes a day.
Dr. Virgie Bright-Ellington is a graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School. She is a former clinical professor at New York University Medical School and a former instructor at Harvard Medical School, Youngstown State University and Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.
Reprinted with permission from Hilton Publishing
