Type 2 Diabetes

A scary article on the rapid spread of type 2 diabetes in India, in the NYT.

In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine. Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick-thin poverty, the malaria and the 1. AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.

Two of my aunts are already suffering from diabetes, one has no sensation in her feet and the other has adult onset diabetes. One of them told me that her doctor said, it was misnomer that it was just sugar, that caused it. But the bigger culprit was carbohydrates, which are composed of sugar.

Also the difference between diabetes in the West and India, is that here, it is a poor person’s disease due to cheap processed junk food. While in India, the richer you are, the worst your diet, and the lower your level of exercise, combined with heavy drinking, leads to this disease being called a rich person's disease.

It seems that Indians have a genetic predisposition for the disease.

Too much food has pernicious implications for a people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes, possibly the byproduct of ancestral genes developed to hoard fat during cycles of feast and famine. This vulnerability was first spotted decades ago when immigrant Indians settled in Western countries and in their retrofitted lifestyles got diabetes at levels dwarfing those in India. Now Westernization has come to India and is bringing the disease home.

Also going barefoot, leads to picking up infections, and helps spread the disease.

Diabetes, though, ruins sensation in the legs, and foot infections go undetected and are often a preamble to amputations. So doctors like Dr. Ramachandran strongly recommend against going barefoot. Yet the culture demands precisely the opposite.

I guess we all need to exercise more, eat healthy food and lead less stressful lives.