What Parents and Grandparents Can Teach
Our Children
What must parents and grandparents teach today’s children about health? The topic is easy as the statistics are so frightening. Today, 30 million North Americans have diabetes. That’s 9.4 percent of the population. Another 80 million suffer from pre-diabetes, and according to a report from the University of California, 50 percent of them will develop the disease. This is the greatest chronic medical epidemic the world has ever witnessed. So who or what can save millions of lives?
The fact is that the medical profession, social agencies, school education programs about health, and other well-intentioned organizations have all failed to curtail the epidemic. To put it bluntly, individual families who understand the problem and act on it may have the best chance of preventing this disaster from happening to their youngest loved ones.
The best weapon is for parents and grandparents to get involved and keep stressing the medical advantages of a healthy lifestyle, exercise and smart eating to children. Then purchase the world’s most important medical instrument, the bathroom scale.
You Can Avoid Type 2 Diabetes
We do need sugar for fuel, but excessive amounts are converted in the body to triglycerides and stored as fat. And that’s the problem.
Dr. Frederick Banting
Won the Nobel Prize
Dr. Frederick Banting, at The University of Toronto, discovered insulin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923.
The next Nobel Prize for research on diabetes should go to those who develop an insulin pill.
Diabetes occurs when blood sugar (glucose), required to supply energy to cells, becomes elevated. Diabetics having a genetic defect experience a failure of the pancreas to produce enough insulin (Type 1 diabetes). For others, the high sugar consumption associated with obesity results in elevated blood sugar that renders cells resistant to the absorption of insulin (Type 2 diabetes).
So what is the latest treatment for this worldwide epidemic? It’s hard to escape the recent ads on T.V. Several non-insulin injection drugs are being touted that work with your own body’s ability to decrease blood sugar. In effect, they slow down food from the stomach and helps to decrease the amount of sugar released from the liver. And when blood sugar increases it increases the amount of insulin from the pancreas.
But patients should also listen hard to the list of potential complications. For instance, it’s not known if it will increase the risk of a thyroid tumor so patients are advised to let their doctor know if they feel or notice a lump in their neck, complain of shortness of breath or have difficulty swallowing.
Patients are also advised the drug may cause pancreatitis, a change in vision, a serious allergic reaction, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhea or constipation.
The best advice? Prevention. Be a smart consumer. Teach your children well.
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