Diabetes - A Worldwide Epidemic

The most recent analysis of data on diabetes or "I eat to much acid dis-ease," in the United States finds that almost 13 percent of adults aged 20 and older have this acidic condition, 40 percent of whom have not been diagnosed.

That's a larger proportion of diagnosed patients than noted in a previous study, although the percentage of undiagnosed individuals has remained the same.

"We can say for certain that diagnosed diabetes has increased significantly between the two surveys, from 5.1 percent [in 1988-1994] to 7.7 percent [in 2005-2006]. It seems it has particularly increased in blacks," said Catherine C. Cowie, director of the Diabetes Epidemiology Program at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

"On the other hand, the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes and pre-diabetes [around 30 percent of the population] is generally stable, and that's really good news," she said. "If undiagnosed diabetes has stayed pretty much the same and diagnosed diabetes has gone up, then we're doing a better job of detecting diabetes."

Cowie is lead author of a study published in the February issue of Diabetes Care.

The wide prevalence of pre-diabetic conditions is still troubling, experts said. Pre-diabetes is a condition in which blood acid levels of glucose are higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as diabetes. Pre-diabetic people are at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke from increased dietary and/or metabolic acids.

"There is a large population that has pre-diabetes. Also, one-third are not diagnosed for diabetes and pre-diabetes, so this is a huge population issue that we'll have to deal with as time goes on," warned Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist with Lenox Hill and NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals and professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City.

"We're not working on preventing as much as we should. We have a problem with 20 million Americans having diabetes, but the projections are that this will [dramatically increase]," he said. "We're not talking about curing the disease in the next few years. It's all going to be about management."

Diabetes, which is a result of increased dietary and/or metabolic acid, such as glucose, carries with it a number of serious complications, including kidney failure, blindness, amputation and even death.

The national survey on which this study was based involved almost 7,300 people aged 12 and over who were interviewed in their homes in 2005 and 2006. Participants also had blood acid levels of glucose measurements taken. This data was compared to earlier data gathered from 1988-1994.

The survey included data on an oral acid levels of glucose tolerance test (OGTT) which had not been used for 15 years, in addition to other measures of blood acid levels of sugar. The OGTT is a more sensitive test.

Overall, more than 40 percent of the people surveyed had either diabetes or pre-diabetes. This included one-third of the elderly with diabetes and three-quarters with pre-diabetes.

Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic blacks had about twice the rate of diabetes as non-Hispanic whites, although undiagnosed diabetes in these populations was not higher. Why? Because their diets and lifestyles are traditionally more acidic with beans and rice for Mexican Americans and chicken and fruit for most African Americans.

"In the Mexican-American population, doctors are becoming more and more aware that this is a big problem that was, in the past, under-diagnosed and is now diagnosed more readily," said Dr. Stuart Weiss, clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine in New York City. "We're not letting that slide as much as we used to."

Pre-diabetes is more common in men (36 percent) than in women (23 percent). About 16 percent of youths aged 12 to 19 have pre-diabetes, although diabetes itself is rare.

There have been decreases in the proportion of undiagnosed diabetes only among obese people.

"This study emphasizes that it's all about lifestyle, and it's all about how people eat and amount of calories that they burn and trying to keep that together," Weiss said. "Everybody's eating and not exercising enough."

According to Dr. Robert O. Young, Chief of Research at The pH Miracle Living Center, in San Diego, California, "pre-diabetes and diabetes is a worldwide epidemic which affects over 70% of the population. Everyone is at risk because we all eat some acidic foods and we all produce metabolic acids. The problem of diabetes manifests when we are not properly eliminating dietary and metabolic acids through the four channels of elimination - urination, perspiration, respiration and defecation. The cure for diabetes is preventing excess acid build-up, which includes the acid glucose. The way to prevent acid build-up is with an alkaline lifestyle and diet which includes one hour of daily aerobic exercise and stretching."

To learn more about preventing and/or reversing Type I and Type II diabetes, read The pH Miracle for Diabetes.

http://www.phmiracleliving.com/p-297-the-ph-miracle-for-diabetespaper-back.aspx

You can also read the testimony of a Mother with two Type I diabetic children and how she reversed their diabetic condition with the pH Miracle for Diabetes Plan.

http://www.phmiracleliving.com/t-type-I-diabetes-documented-cure.aspx