Sunday, April 29, 2012

Type 2 Diabetes, Children, and the Cause

The NY Times has a piece bemoaning the rise of Type 2 Diabetes in children. We have been concerned with that to the extreme. In our book, Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, we argued that this epidemic would become a pandemic. There have been almost 100 downloads per week of the DRAFT. On the other hand people like Harvard economists have dismissed the issue, and they would rather focus on taxing gasoline. The pandemic will collapse our health care system, since Type 2 Diabetes patients just will not die quickly! They can be kept alive at enormous costs. However the early cure is simple, stop eating!

But the cause, the US Department of Agriculture and its exploding budget of fat foods! The solution, twofold, stop all in school meals, let parents send kinds with brow bags or have them shed some weight, and second disband the Department of Agriculture. We prime the  pumps at school and then watch as the fat munchkins go to fast food outlets after they get dropped off from the school bus.

As the Times notes:

... a college senior from ... learned that she had type 2 diabetes when she was 16. Her grandfather had had both legs amputated as a result of the disease, and one of the first questions she asked was when she would lose her legs and her eyesight. A doctor scolded her for being fat and told her she had to lose weight and could never eat sugar again. She left the office in tears and did not go back; soon after, she joined the study at Columbia. Like many of the children in the program, she did not even know how to swallow a pill. 

She believes that the disease “is not a death sentence,” she said, if she is careful about controlling her blood sugar. But it has been a struggle. Her family tends to be overweight, she sometimes craves sweets and she has orthopedic problems that have required surgery and have made it hard for her to exercise. She is also being treated for high blood pressure. 

A few weeks ago, because her blood sugar shot up despite the diabetes pills she was taking, she began using insulin. 

And in a few months she will be having kidney, nerve, and eye problems, then heart problems. And we will be paying. Thank God the physician at least said she was fat! Tears were not the answer, self-control was, and it requires a family effort. The problem is we consider her a victim when in reality she is a self inflicted burden on society. The child with leukemia is not at fault, while the obese teen is. And the solution is so simple, stop eating!