By Muhammed Tanko
The world witnessed yet another day of World Diabetes Day on Saturday, November 14 to raise awareness on the issue of diabetes which has proven to be a fast-growing chronic disease affecting the global population. So far, little progress is documented as blood sugar problems affect distinct demographic groups. Something is amiss and answers lurking elsewhere that isn’t common knowledge.
Diabetes, a chronic disease characterized by high fasting blood glucose that is triggered by poor metabolism of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
Associated with the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases including high blood pressure, strokes, and heart disease as well as kidney disease and nerve damage, it is one of the most dreadful diseases of our time.
What’s more worrisome that it’s on the rise in countries like the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control CDC, the rate for young adults under 20 affected by the disease is on the rise.
With an estimate of over 400 million affected globally, The World Health Organization expects the numbers to reach up to 592 million by the year 2035. This is a serious cause of concern for all. Why? Simply because it seems to be everyone’s business these days as more people including those who are not typically genetically predisposed are affected.
This means that lifestyle factors like- dietary choices, undernutrition, over nutrition are the top factors involved in recent times.
Due to over agriculture the soils are depleted of nutrients and food cultivated consequently from these poor soils. The situation is further exacerbated by the use of inorganic or chemical fertilizers that aid in the growth of the plants by replenishing the soils but also negatively affects the soil.
This leads to problems of agricultural runoff that pollute underground water systems and the ecosystem in general creating a vicious cycle of other environmental factors.
Chemicals that also come from fumigation can also cause a myriad of problems including endocrine disruption where the receptor sites of cells of glands like the pancreas are affected, become dysfunctional, and function at suboptimal rates which can solely or in the combination of factors that induce glandular problems like diabetes. And of course, obesogenic cells in fat cells trigger obesity.
Traditionally, older folks have been associated with type II diabetes due to changes in body physiology, primarily sub-optimal metabolism which is a primer of developing most modern diseases. Hypo metabolic rates seem to be very common yet under-diagnosed, and if every clinician was to perform a full metabolic assessment via both clinical observations and tests and assessments, the findings and statistics will be alarming.
This brings us to the case of obesity in the modern age. Just a generation or two back, in almost every demographic setting in the world, the incidence of obesity was quite low or nonexistent for the most part.
Obesity is largely attributed to the foods consumed by indigenous communities otherwise referred to as ancestral foods and more importantly how these foods are prepared.
From the Masai of Kenya to the Inuit to the Middle Eastern Arabs and everything in between, modern chronic diseases were not the case as have been documented now.
The Asians around India, Pakistan, and other areas where their traditional spices like garlic, turmeric, bulbs, and other herbs are used not just for medicinal applications but routinely used in everyday cooking, have the lowest rates of some of these ailments including diabetes.
What’s more, epidemiological studies show that it’s only when they leave such aspects of their culture—the food and other associated lifestyle factors—that they tend to be susceptible to and actually developing western diseases precipitated by the standard American diet.
The irony is these days everyone seems to be eating the standard American diet or some variant of it in almost every nook and cranny globally, with the exception of perhaps remote villages, mostly attributed to purchasing power or the availability of such industrial foods.
For instance, just a little over 100 years ago, modern technology developed the process of extracting oils from vegetables and seeds. A process where a few decades before that it was practically impossible to do that, so the people had to use the natural oils they had for cooking. Just this year even, a 76-year-old man told me when they were young, everything used to be fried with palm oil. Vegetable and seed oils that may have been common or starting to be at that same time in the West had not reached developing countries yet.
These seed crops were cultivated in high volumes and then processed thereafter in large quantities. Good for business but bad for health as the statistics revealed many decades after. The United States Department of Agriculture has such data. With marketing and propaganda, these oils replaced oil, coconut oils, and other safe oils used in the past, and with them came the incidence of systemic inflammation, coupled with environmental factors that trigger obesity and heart disease and of course diabetes which is usually triggered by the last two.
The problem is polyunsaturated fat, hyper omega 6 in relation to other fatty acids as well as other processed foods that are equally pro-inflammatory that affect hormones and tissues throughout the body. With this comes water retention or water weight that leads to overweight individuals.
It’s important to note when Pima Indians among others when they migrate to other areas and start eating such industrial foods suddenly develop these same chronic illnesses. Even in those with genetic predispositions, observations reveal the dietary factor ranks strongest.
Middle-aged adults these days are sedentary and eat these kinds of foods [a lot actually grew up eating them] which coupled with stress levels which are equally higher than previous decades despite modern gadgets and convenience as well as a relative increase in wealth. In the West, in particular, it’s more of a scarcity of wisdom with respect to lifestyle choices like diet rather than scarcity of resources. Being age 45 and above a risk factor is being overweight. The elements that bring about weight issues alongside improving metabolic rates can be utilized to tackle the onset of prediabetes, which in turn triggers diabetes.
So focusing on weight should not be the focus but rather focus on the right attitude and behavioral change that leads to a better lifestyle and corresponding decrease in susceptibility to developing chronic diseases.
Nurses who are at the center of this year’s theme of the world diabetes day, today, given the right support and training in functional nutritional education, assessment, planning, and application within a general context of lifestyle improvement can spearhead the way and reverse the epidemic that is afflicting the globe.
It’s doable.
