Minor public health rant

[wshaffer]

KQED's Forum had a good segment on the rise in diagnoses of diabetes this morning - I caught some of it as I was driving to work this morning. (I think there will eventually be audio available at that link, but it's not there now.)

The show generally did a good job of covering a complicated and contentious topic. But I winced a bit when they opened the lines for calls, because there was a particular subject that I just knew was going to come up. And it did: multiple calls from people who have, or whose children have, type I diabetes, pleading with the presenters to carefully distinguish between type I and type II diabetes, because they're tired of people assuming that they (or their children) are fat, or lazy, or ate too much sugar.

Now, I genuinely have all the sympathy in the world for type I diabetics, who have a crummy condition that isn't their fault.

But I can't help but wonder why it never seems to occur to anyone that rather than asking the general public to learn to distinguish between a biochemical breakdown in which the body stops producing insulin and a biochemical breakdown in which the body fails to efficiently use insulin, we could just stop being nasty and judgmental towards people about their biochemical breakdowns. Which would help people with type I diabetes, and type II diabetes, and mental illness, and all sorts of conditions, and no one would have to learn any endocrinology. Sounds like win/win to me.

Comments

[zellandyne.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps whether it might occur to the general public to instead demand healthier mass market food products and better health and diet education, so that people actually *know* what to avoid and can do so easily. It is rarely a simple issue of lazyness or poor diet choice. You can't make a good diet choice if you don't know what's in your foods or what's bad for you.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Give them their due, the government of NYC has made steps in that direction, but alas, probably too few.

And I do wish it were possible to get rid of high fructose corn syrup, in all instances where it's used.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I think the jury's still out on whether high-fructose corn syrup is worse than other sweeteners, but it's certainly used far too often, because it's very cheap. I think we could make great strides if we simply reduced or eliminated the corn subsidies that make it so cheap, but they're so entrenched that it's hard to see how it would happen.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yup, the corn lobby is indeed a powerful one.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

*Nods* This is the way to actually do something about increasing rates of diabetes, even if it might not do anything to salve the hurt feelings of type I's.

[visvavajra.livejournal.com]

I agree with this completely - I also think that genetics is a major factor in most Type 2 cases. When i was diagnosed with 2 I was perhaps 10 - 15 overweight and not eating very well, but most people can do that and their pancreas doesn't outright fail. I was on and off medication for a few years, but without extreme dieting and extreme excersize nothing helped. Until this year, when I finally went to a specialist, who put me on insulin. At the time he did this I was ten pounds underweight, eating nothing but tofu and vegetatbles, and my sugar was still always up around 300. At the time the doctor said that any Type 2 diabetic who ate the way i did would be fine, and any type 1 diabetic who without medication would be dead. So he basically admitted my case was by far one of the strangest he'd ever seen, and that his only explanation was that I must have some sort of very slow-acting Type 1.

All in all diabetes is, I think, a much more complicated disease than even doctors may understand, and I really do wish there wasn't such a stigma about it. I have never overeaten or been obese in my life and I didn't %$^&ing bring this on myself.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Wow - I've read about a few cases like yours: people who were diagnosed with type 2 as adults, didn't respond well to the usual type 2 medications, and didn't improve until treated with insulin. They usually went through a few years of hell in between, being labelled "non-compliant" by their doctors and the like.

Diabetes is really complicated. I'm sure that when we actually understand the causes on a molecular level, we'll find that there are a lot more than two types.

[14cyclenotes.livejournal.com]

I'll bite the perp's ankle if you point hir out to me.