Why has China become the Kingdom of Diabetes? While this is certainly not a popular statement, the truth is that in addition to population genetics, we are also partly to blame.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body is unable to effectively use the insulin that is produced. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar.
Hyperglycemia, or elevated blood sugar, over time can cause serious damage to many organs in the body, especially the nerves and blood vessels. Diabetes is defined as fasting blood glucose equal to or greater than 7.0 mmol/L, or abnormally high blood glucose that is being treated with medication, or a history of diabetes diagnosis.
The “sugar-rich” countries: Chinese don’t believe it, but Americans guessed it
In 2007, the prevalence of diabetes in China had risen to 9.7 percent, with 92.4 million patients. This figure was difficult for Ministry of Health officials to accept at the time. Yet 15 years before this figure was announced, Jared Diamond, a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, famous for his Pulitzer Prize-winning popular science book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” wrote in Nature that “Chinese lifestyles are changing and diabetes will cause serious public health problems. Professor Diamond’s prediction was not taken seriously by either the world or China at the time. Today, the “Diamond Prophecy” has unfortunately been confirmed.
According to a survey report released by the authorities in 2013, the prevalence of diabetes among Chinese adults is 11.6%, and people with pre-diabetes account for 50.1% of the total population. In other words, less than one in 10 adults has diabetes, and one in two adults is pre-diabetic. According to the survey conducted in 2010, the prevalence of diabetes in China surpassed that of the United States (11.3%), and the number of patients reached 114 million, surpassing that of India, becoming the first country with diabetes in name only.
Deciphering the reasons for the outbreak of “little sugar man” in China
In China, type 2 diabetes, once known as the “adult type”, has become younger, younger and more geometrically developed in recent years.
Those with a good appetite and a family history of diabetes, the “little fat dunks” have gradually become the main force to seize the “territory” of adult diabetes.
If you think about the phenomenon of juvenile diabetes in China, it may be related to the frugal gene, and then it is the consequence of China’s economic development and the uncontrolled diet of the country.
The Coca-Cola-ization of life: In the days when grandparents did not have Coca-Cola and other carbonated and aerated drinks in their lives, food and clothing were also a problem, and the word diabetes was a distant thing for the whole nation at that time.
But today, from infancy onwards, the simple matter of quenching thirst has too many opportunities to be replaced by Coca-Cola, Sprite, etc., our original “sweet well water”. After working as an adult, either quickly to chicken leg burgers and other kinds of fast food and solve, is often in and out of high-end hotel meetings, dinner, the table full of delicacies into the belly. Such a life, who can not resist.
”Eat a lot”, “eat well”, “eat fine”, the three eating life of adolescents, is also the cause of the “epidemic” of diabetes in adolescents The reason for the “epidemic” of diabetes among teenagers.
Sedentary generation: The development of technology and economic improvement have brought Chinese people not only a change in diet structure, but also a change in the way they travel. Chinese people, both men and women, young and old, have generally started to enjoy the comfort and convenience brought by the family car, and unknowingly, it has brought changes to the human body.
According to statistics, a man who owns a small car will gain an average of 1.8 kilograms in weight and will double the likelihood of reaching obesity standards, while the proportion of small fat people in China is already several times what it was decades ago.
Changes in the working environment and transportation have significantly reduced the physical activity of the Chinese middle class and white-collar workers, and the formation of a large “sedentary group” is an important factor in the widespread prevalence of diabetes and the trend toward a younger age of onset.
Some surveys have shown that watching TV, which is a normal part of life, is also closely related to the prevalence of diabetes. Harvard University’s prestigious Nurses’ Health Research Project found that watching two hours of television a day can increase the risk of diabetes by 14%. The analysis concluded that watching TV is one of the highest health risks of all sedentary activities, probably because people tend to eat and drink easily while watching TV.
More poor people in the U.S., more “rich” people in China
”In the United States, it is the poor who get diabetes; in China, it is the rich who are more likely to get diabetes,” said Li Guangwei, one of the core members of the Daqing study and a professor at China-Japan Hospital, who analyzed the phenomenon of diabetes in China. But the “rich” here should be put in quotation marks. Rich people in the United States pay attention to healthy diet, popular housekeeping, go to the gym to exercise, the body lean, and naturally have less diabetes. The poorer Americans eat cheap and high-calorie food to save money and have no money to go to the gym, so there are more fat people and more people with high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and diabetes.
China’s middle class and rich people are enjoying the lifestyle of the American poor, and the high incidence of diabetes is self-evident.
In the long run, the trend will be for Chinese people to get diabetes
Half of all Chinese adults are already pre-diabetic.
Imagine the impact on China’s health care system if all of these people become diabetic in the future.
If left unchecked, the other half of adults who are not pre-diabetic will become pre-diabetic sooner or later. If they become pre-diabetic, most of them will be at risk of becoming diabetic without lifestyle intervention.
What about the next generation in China? If the current reckless eating habits and sedentary lifestyles are not changed, more little fatties will be born, and a significant number of them will become part of the diabetic army.
The current lifestyle of the Chinese people is already highly relevant to the incidence of diabetes, and every Chinese person has the possibility of becoming diabetic.
For prediabetes, the WHO guidelines do not recommend pharmacological intervention. The only way to stop them from continuing to evolve into diabetes is lifestyle intervention, which means learning to eat and exercise when a person has adequate food and adequate time to exercise.