As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
CDC Projects 40% of Americans Will Develop Diabetes; What Do We Do About It?
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So this is concerning:
40% of Americans Will Develop Diabetes: CDC
We often see accusations of "Nanny State" regulations and calls for personal accountability when it comes to diet and exercise, but when the CDC comes out and says that nearly half of all Americans will develop a major, incurable disease I think it's well past time for a regulatory approach to the problem.
So what do we do? What are the major causes of diabetes, and what will it take to prevent more people from getting the disease? Is the public sufficiently aware of the risk? If so, why aren't these dangers being heeded?
40% of Americans Will Develop Diabetes: CDC
The ongoing diabetes and obesity epidemics have combined with ever-increasing human lifespans to increase lifetime risk of type 2 diabetes to about 40 percent for both men and women, said lead study author Edward Gregg, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch in the division of diabetes translation at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"We weren't necessarily surprised that it increased, but we didn't expect it to increase this much," Gregg said. "Forty percent is a humbling number."
The odds are even worse for certain minority groups. Half of black women and Hispanic men and women are predicted to develop type 2 diabetes during their lifetime, the researchers reported.
We often see accusations of "Nanny State" regulations and calls for personal accountability when it comes to diet and exercise, but when the CDC comes out and says that nearly half of all Americans will develop a major, incurable disease I think it's well past time for a regulatory approach to the problem.
So what do we do? What are the major causes of diabetes, and what will it take to prevent more people from getting the disease? Is the public sufficiently aware of the risk? If so, why aren't these dangers being heeded?
Hexmage-PA on
0
Posts
We need more ads like this, honestly we as a society shame smokers and drinkers and encourage over eating and sloth like behavior. Its an overall trend that direly needs to be corrected.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Jesus Christ that's dark.
Is there actually that much shaming of drinkers? Aside from warnings about drinking while driving, I distinctly remember a lot of advertisements glorifying boozing out of pretty much every variety--beer commercials are literally inescapable, but wine and harder things are extensively advertised, especially tequila and rum.
At least as far as television and magazines are concerned, beers are the only way adults should be able to articulate with each other unless they're godless, unpatriotic heathens, and if you're sitting down for anything more than ten minutes with another person and not breaking out a bottle or six of wine, you're an uncivilized pinhead. They certainly outnumber media exposure to even universally reviled behavior, like intoxicated driving.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw an advertising campaign for sobriety for sobriety's sake (as oppose to anti-smoking, which is common). It'd have to be more than a year, if not more.
It's trickier to shame people for doing something that you need to do in order to live. Also, the government is retarded about nutrition, so I'm not sure they're the best source of solid info.
I was impressed that they got the video game controllers in the right order though.
>_>
<_<
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Honestly a big part of losing weight for me as an adult was knowing that the 2000 calorie diet is mostly bullshit, and calories don't tell the whole story on fucking anything. Its like filling your car up with 12 gallons of "fluids" if you did that with window washing fluid you wont be driving anywhere.
Also we need to just be honest with ourselves. No I'm not going to look like Hugh Jackman, but that doesn't mean I have to accept looking like the penguin.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yeah I think this is kind of a liberal goal that doesn't see the forest from the trees. I'm sure subsidizing corn does lead to an influx of shitty food, but not subsidizing it doesn't suddenly mean shitty food goes away or that people will stop eating it.
Also I think the gaming community needs to stop having thin skin when it comes to being called out on being sedentary junk food consuming people. Sure not everyone is like that, but stereotypes don't always come from nowhere, and I'm sure if you go to PAX you'll find more people who are overweight and don't do any exercise outside of 8 oz curls versus the gym rat that plays halo like its a religion.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Quick primer on diabeties, since I got T1 right before becoming a teenager:
T1, is also known as child onset, but it hits at random and has genetic triggers. Your pancreas essentially stops working completely.
T2, is where your pancreas isnt as effective. It can deteriorate into T1 over time.Is genetic as well, usually (but not always) caused by extremely bad habits.
T2 can be controlled through diet and exercise alone for some, sometimes you need medicine help (injections of insulin, or pills). T1 is controlled through injections of insulin.
Gestational diabeties is a temporary form of T2 (kinda) that occours in pregnant women for the term of pregnancy. If not brought under control, it can turn into T1/permanent t2. It also puts the person at a much greater risk for diabeties at a regular date.
I havent read up on literature real recently but I'll be happy to try to answer what I can.
The thing about T2 diabeties, is usually its onset is an explosion primed by a ton of daily bad habits. Like these habits like obesity should be telling you already to get in shape or you are going to die.
1 in 8 I think is the current statistic for T1 and T2 population in the US. Which is kind of shocking in itself. if you have to consider 2 more of those 8 will get it within their lifetime it's scary. I am curious if this counts people on their deathbeds, its common for severly ill people who rack up conditions on their death bed to get diabeties as one of them (HIV/ certain cancers). If someone has diabeties for 2 weeks to a couple months at the end of their lives, I'd consider it not worth counting.
The most common thing that is talked about is a cure. there are several treatments including transplants of cells to jump start your pancreas, but you end up on immunosuppresant drugs, which (simplified) can then lead to getting diabetes again in a 'damned if you do/don't' situation.
To allow me my normal cynicalness: the last 15ish years, every 2 years I read a new article saying 'a cure is 10 years away'. There's a lot of money in treatment, like insane amounts of money. I work in a related industry, and the news that our client base growing over 300% would give us a breath of relief, with the drop in reimbursement diabetic supplies have undergone from medicare.
I think this is an important point. Shaming someone for their food choices isn't going to be as effective as simply reducing their access to unhealthy food. Eliminating the subsidies that make unhealthy food so affordable will do more than just telling someone not to eat something that tastes good.
Taste is also a major factor. I believe that, even if healthier options were made as cheap and easy to access as unhealthy options, more people would still choose the unhealthy food because it grants the greater immediate benefit: enjoyment. In fact, I read an article in the Atlantic last year in which a representative for a major fast food franchise claimed that advertising a meal option as being a more healthful alternative has a negative impact on sales. Why? Because the average person equates "healthful" with "less enjoyable".
I think the government should encourage private companies to engineer healthy food that is just as enjoyable as unhealthy food. I mean, I drink water and eat things like broccoli and kale, but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed them more than a glass of sweet tea and a pizza.
We should probably do less shaming, indeed.
(as a side not, it's very frustrating that when searching for that paper, the first results I got were "we should be shaming people more to combat obesity)
Soda's and sugary drinks also tend to be where a lot of people have a blind side and not only do they make you fat/unhealthy they wreck your teeth like a mother. I'm still dealing with adolence and young adult hood drinking sugary drinks and the dentist bills and filling suck.
pleasepaypreacher.net
From previous discussions, my understanding is that the foods most commonly recommended for healthy living, even when not expensive, aren't within reach of large swathes of people in Suburbia. And to a lesser extent it's difficult to have enough time to properly cook it when you could microwave stuff instead.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Also holy crap that video my one year old nephew is sometimes given Chocolate Buttons in public if he's crying a bit and now I just want to snatch them away from him I am worst uncle.
Regarding soda, I switched over from sugary drinks to diet drinks a few years back and now find the "normal" versions of my favorite sodas to be too sweet to enjoy. The thing is, many people seem to believe that artificial sweeteners (such as aspartame) are supremely unhealthful, apparently believing that drinking a bottle of sugar water is the more healthy option. I've had several people at work openly criticize me for drinking a diet soda while they themselves drink 40 grams of sugar in mere minutes.
I wonder how much of a difference we'd see in diabetes incidence if we banned sugary sodas alone? I also understand that dietary fiber slows sugar absorption, and that most Americans don't get enough fiber. Maybe we should start recommending fiber supplements?
Well, your body is kinda programmed to find fat and sugar delicious, so good luck with that.
Do you know to what degree that's true and ingrained?
Like, we are definitely wired to enjoy those because until recently you couldn't really get them in large amounts without a shitload of nutrients. But I would be extremely surprised if it didn't turn out to have a huge component related to the fact that now people grow up not knowing you can have chicken that's not fried, or whatever. I recall an article by one of the Cracked writers talking about how he has trouble eating good vegetables fresh because when he was a kid he always got them in a can and all slimy and now the crunchy kind just feels wrong and he had to force himself.
I think it's likely that at least part of why this stuff is delicious is because we grew up with it, and with some exception a lot of people are happy to eat the same kind of thing forever and don't want to branch out (and when they do, it takes a very open mind not to be immediately repulsed by strange differences).
Yeah, fat shaming is extremely counterproductive. How many overweight and obese people have thought about taking up a sport or starting jogging only to abandon the idea for fear that they'll be publicly ridiculed? I've heard before of private swim classes only for overweight and obese people; maybe we need to have more things like that?
Well, the tariffs on sugar are also absurd.
But I also suspect at least part of it is, as much as I hate the dichotomy, based on nurture during critical periods and a lack of desire to branch out, along with the ease and cheapness with which you can get a buffalo ranch mcchicken versus some kind of teriyaki chicken with rice, or some other healthier version.
This isn't an issue I'm super educated on, and I'm hardly fat, so I feel weird speaking about this, but yeah I think that actually sounds like it might be a great idea. A supportive environment where everyone gets you can be really amazing at working through issues positively and with something like exercise I have no doubt that that would be extremely helpful. Though you'd still probably have a lot of shaming from people outside of the class who know about it, but fuck people.
Honestly most of that shit is in peoples heads. Like I'm not Jim Slim (though I am down from my most unhealthiest by about twenty pounds), but from my experience at the local Gym no one fucking cares. No one snickers, no one points and laughs and tells you're a fat fuck. Hell most of the gym rats would probably give you advice on strength training if you asked and weren't a dick about it (everyone loves to share their routine, it seems like the one constant).
I know this is a fear of fat people, because I had it, but this is mostly a defensive mechanism to explain why you aren't doing something about your health. "I can't do that people will laugh at me, mock me, or blah blah blah" its just not true from my personal experience. Going to a gym is scary, its like admitting you're an alcoholic, you don't want to take that step and admit "I'm fat, and unhealthy and this will not get better on its own" but you have do that or you will not get better and the longer you wait the worse it gets.
pleasepaypreacher.net
There's also the part where being overweight is a complex issue that is not always directly attributable to "won't stop eating the McStuffs," so yeah, fat shaming is stupid and awful in about 36 different ways.
I also place considerable blame on diet culture. Like, just the fact that something like "being on a diet" exists, because the message it sends is that you can eat like shit, then when you get fat you just eat healthy for a few weeks and lose weight so you can go back to eating like shit again. Fad diets need to die in a fire. Do not go on a diet, go on a start eating healthy and then do that forever.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yeah. "Diet" works a lot better if every time you use the word, you use it in the sense of "a cat's diet is" or "early man's diet was." It's just... not a useful concept outside of being an all-encompassing general description of the food you eat.
A few years ago I was at the cinema when one of the adds features a (not terribly but still noticibly) overweight fellow talking about how he doesn't need to lose weight, he knows he'll never be rocking a six pack and he's okay with that, and he already has a wonderful lady who loves him just the way he is. Off screen call of "Dinner's ready!", and what turns out to be his mother walks on with a TV tray. Tagline was "Who do you think you're kidding?" Sponsored by the Health Service.
This was a pretty brief billboard campaign as well, like said gentlemen in a clothes shop saying "Oh, these XLs are very small aren't they" while the shopkeeper rolls her eyes.
This campaign lasted about three weeks, before another poster with the same font instead had a slightly overweight woman holding her wedding dress while the poster said "You can do it!" I suspect the first campaign drew some flak for talking down to the intended audience. However the positive message one didn't last either.
These days the tack is more direct, like a belly peeking over some boxers where instead of Calvin Klein you would read "Heart Disease", "Cancer" or "Type Two Diabetes". Which I don't really have a problem with because it's not condescending.
My solution to this problem would be to limit the amount of carbs in a drink to a certain amount per unit of volume of soda. So if a 12 ounce can of sugar water commonly has about 40 carbs, the government should step in and say that is too much, and cut it down to something more like 25 carbs.
Really though, I got no education about the importance of balancing carbs/fat/protein when I was young. I was over weight most of my life. When I went to college I took a nutrition class where they taught this stuff, and having a very basic understanding of how to balance these things and that it will effect how hungry I feel has made a huge difference.
pleasepaypreacher.net
As for switching from fast/fried food to the alternatives, I found that it is easier to do if you have good ethnic food options. In the small town where I grew up, it was fast/fried/greasy or nothing if you ate out. Where I live now, I can get a healthy plate of Mediterranean, Thai or sushi as easily as a burger. Since the food comes an actual cultural food tradition and wasn't dreamed up as a dietary regimen, its healthy and tastes even better than the fast food alternatives.
As a person who suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder I highly doubt your claim. Fear of social ridicule can extremely difficult to overcome, even if you know that your anxiety is irrational. Besides, even if no one says anything to you directly, you sometimes can't help but overhear people laughing, automatically assume that they made a joke at your expense, and feel intensely uncomfortable for long periods of time despite trying to internally convince yourself why your anxiety is irrational.
Mostly, I'd prefer subsidies and programs that make it easier and cheaper for families to get access to healthy stuff. If people eat at McDonalds because it's cheap and easy, that means we need to grant them alternatives that are as cheap and easy, or at least closer.
The US government took a role in its citizens health when it tried to draft them for WW1, people were too sick and falling apart to send to another countries meat grinder. It's probably time it did again.
People really need to realize that you take the rarest food you eat, maybe one or two a month, and that is how you are supposed to consume something like soda. But now its a majorly multiple per day habbit which is gross from a dietary perspective. I'm no bastion of healthy eating, work at it, but it can be challenging to cook when for the same cost, $3 of mcdonalds fills you up and theres no effort.
One thing that's been happening at the local/state level is an expansion of the Women's, Infants and Children program and food stamps so that they can be accepted at farmers markets. That opens up healthy options for people in healthy food deserts.
Per the link I posted, that's not really the issue. It's more that people respond to negativity about weight with binge eating and avoidance of exercise. It's just a facet of psychology that this doesn't work.
For being such a major issue there really seems to be very little knowledge of the details surrounding body weight. Most people act as if it is always as simple as "calories in vs calories out" when there are many more details at play. I doubt I can find the link, but I read one in-depth article a few months ago that cited several of these complexities. For example, the children of obese parents are often obese themselves, even when they have been adopted and raised by normal weight parents.
There is a large heritable component, yeah. It's a mistake to attribute the issue to any one cause.
Now, I'm not at risk of developing diabetes and I don't think I was when I was chubbier in my not-so-distant-youth, so I can't speak to the experience of those who are at risk. But as far as a solution goes to a problem we all agree is occurring--high obesity, low activity, ubiquitous and empty calories, and all the attendant health problems that accompany them--the promotion of strict self control is not helpful, in my experience. It fallaciously assumes that pretty much 100% of the problem is one's own lack of willpower, and that it is a moral failing as well as a physical one.
Anyway, I could write many more words about fat shaming and stuff, but I just wanted to throw my lot in with the "Shaming is a poor motivator" crowd, which I don't think is controversial around here. Obesity rates are the result of many, many factors, both personal and societal, and every instance of obesity and diabetes can be attributed to a variety of combinations of these factors. Separating the preventable cases from the inevitable cases is a task for health researchers I do not envy, but is likely the key to an actually effective solution to the rise in diabetes that also reaches the widest number of people.
NNID: Hakkekage