It’s a crisis by numbers and there is no safety in them. Diabetes is on a rampage as the International Diabetes Federation’s 2017 Atlas reveals. An authoritative resource that focuses on the global burden of diabetes and its complications, the report reveals the global diabetic epidemic that ranks among the top 10 causes of mortality worldwide, leading to five million deaths every year.
The Middle East and North Africa region alone is host to 37.8 million diabetics and expected to touch 80 million by 2045. In the UAE, 17 per cent of the adult population is affected and worse, for every known diabetic, there is at least one more who remains potentially undiagnosed. If this picture seems alarming, there is a simple way for sceptics to validate its truth: Just ask a dozen people in your vicinity if any one of them suffers from diabetes. Chances are, many of them will confess they do.
Though societies have, decade after decade, been made aware of the dangers of diabetes, the siren call of a consumptive lifestyle has all but drowned out those cautionary voices. The baseline problem of high blood sugar and its impact on various body organs and the consequent mass of health complications, and even death, is a biology lesson that most individuals do not consider important to remember, much less brush up on when stricken by the disease. Thus, the mortality outcome of diabetes, unfortunately and arguably, almost entirely predicates itself on self-deterministic choices as individuals continue to choose indulgence over moderation as a lifestyle pattern.
The big truth about diabetes is that perfidious as it is, it can also be controlled, even banished into remission. With each new dire projection about its increasing prevalence, there are also immensely reassuring medical evidences of how it can be combated. Study after study has established the salutary effects of weight control, correct diet, regular exercise and stress management on diabetes. This exertion of will power and discipline goes beyond managing the condition to even helping reverse it. But this advice is not preternatural; it is simply a reiteration of time-tested health precepts that point to the preferred approach to many lifestyle-derived, and perforce interlinked, health conditions such as blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems.
The moment this understanding dawns on a diabetic, she or he would find the proverbial needle in the monumental haystack of diabetic management control.
