Health Center - Diabetes
About eight percent of all Americans have diabetes, and the rate is increasing. Learn more about this prevalent and life-threatening disease, including common symptoms, how it affects your health, tips to manage it and prevent complications and ways to reduce your risk factors.
Diabetes Guide
Diabetes Prevention: Start Small, Experts Say
Here are some simple ways to keep type 2 diabetes at bay
By Margaret Steele
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Diabetes robs people of their lives -- their vision, their mobility, even their limbs -- if it is not controlled, yet the real tragedy of this modern-day scourge is that its most common form, type 2, is largely preventable.
Type 2 diabetes, typically caused by poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle, often leads to blindness, heart and kidney disease, nerve damage, and even amputations.
Formerly known as adult-onset diabetes because it was rarely seen in young people, type 2 diabetes now disables Americans of all ages in all 50 states, according to new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eighteen states saw their rates of diabetes cases double between 1995 and 2010, while 42 states saw that rate jump by 50 percent, the agency report found.
People with diabetes can't properly convert the food they eat into energy. The result is that harmful levels of glucose build up in the blood, instead of fueling the rest of the body.
