From Your Health Journal…..A great article in one of my favorite web sites to promote called Red Orbit, written by Lawrence LeBlond. The article is entitled Global Sugar Intake Behind The Rise In Type 2 Diabetes. Obesity is on the rise all over the world, and one health risk factor associated with obesity is type 2 diabetes, which in many cases, is environmental – sometimes reversible with weight loss. Believe it or not, more than 350 million people around the glboe are believed to have diabetes, and for years health experts have debated on what the exact driver of the illness has been. While sugar intake has been viewed as a culprit in many eyes, scientists have long refuted that conjecture and attributed the global health crisis to too much overall food intake and obesity. Recently, a new study suggests through compelling evidence that Type 2 diabetes is being largely driven by the rising consumption of sugary foods and drinks. Please visit the Red Orbit web site (link provided below) to read the complete article.”
From the article…..
More than 350 million people worldwide are believed to have diabetes, and for years health experts have debated on what the exact driver of the illness has been. While sugar intake has been viewed as a culprit in many eyes, scientists have long refuted that conjecture and attributed the global health crisis to too much overall food intake and obesity.
But in a new finding by three California universities – Stanford, UC-Berkeley and UCSF – suggests through compelling evidence that Type 2 diabetes is being largely driven by the rising consumption of sugary foods and drinks. This evidence comes in the form of large-scale analysis of worldwide sugar availability over the last decade. The findings have been published in Wednesday’s (Feb. 27) issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
In all, the American researchers looked at sugar intake in 175 countries, including the United States. They found increases in sugar intake account for a third of all new cases of diabetes in the US and a quarter of all cases worldwide. In the countries studied, the researchers found an average 150-calorie-per-day increase in the availability of sugar – roughly the equivalent of a can of cola. This accounts for a rise in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes by 1.1 percent.
The team also found that, in the countries studied, an increase of 150-calories-per-day for all food, regardless of sugar content, only led to a 0.1 percent rise in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes, adding credence to the evidence that sugar intake is a prominent driver for onset of diabetes.
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The study’s lead author, Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said the finding was “quite a surprise.”
“We’re not diminishing the importance of obesity at all, but these data suggest that at a population level there are additional factors that contribute to diabetes risk besides obesity and total calorie intake, and that sugar appears to play a prominent role,” Basu said.
While the study cannot prove that sugar alone is causing diabetes, it does confirm that the longer a population is exposed to excess sugar, the higher its diabetes rate will be after taking obesity and other factors into account. The study also found that diabetes rates waned over time when sugar availability dropped, independent of changes in consumption of other calories.
To read the full article…..Click here