Americas Fastest Growing Epidemic: Diabetes

Background

The fastest growing American epidemic is diabetes. Each year the number of obese people in America increases, and not in a slight way. Tablets and video games are taking away from the physical play that children need in order to stay healthy. Without the physical activity being prevalent, many children become obese, and in the worst case, it leads to a life-long diseases called diabetes. diabetes-management-training-causes-treatment-prevention-c8

What is Diabetes? 

Diabetes is when an individuals blood sugar, also commonly known as blood glucose, is too high. Glucose is made in our liver and muscles and found in most of the foods we eat. It’s job is to distribute the glucose to each cell to give our bodies energy. Our pancreas is the organ that breaks down the food we eat by releasing a hormone into our bloodstream called insulin. This hormone helps the cells carry the glucose to each cell. If the body doesn’t make enough or work correctly with the insulin the glucose can’t reach the cells. If the levels of glucose are too high, a person gets diagnosed with diabetes.

Some signs and symptoms of diabetes are:

-Being hungry

-losing weight without trying

-Being thirsty

-Dry & itchy skin

-blurry eyesight

Types of Diabetes

There are three types of diabetes, type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. Type 1 is developed usually at a young age. This is when the body cannot make insulin anymore and the immune system attacks the cells that are supposed to make insulin. Treatment includes taking shots of insulin, being physically active, and controlling cholesterol levels.

Type 2 diabetes, also the most commonly diagnosed one, is more common in adults until recently most children have been diagnosed with it. It usually starts when the liver and muscles don’t produce cells to carry the insulin throughout the body. The pancreas cannot keep up with the amount of insulin needed for the high blood sugar in the body and eventually stops making it. This is the type of diabetes that most obese children are experiencing.

Gestational diabetes is more likely to develop in pregnant woman or overweight people. It usually goes away after some extended periods of time.

The Studies
overcoming-laziness-1Now that the background on what diabetes is covered, the question then becomes, why is obesity increasing in america and is it correlated to diabetes? My first answer to this question was because kids are lazy. As Americans, our family traditions drastically differ from other countries. Our traditions have also greatly changed over a short period of time. The common belief that women stay home to be the rock of the household isn’t the norm anymore. Most children are lock-key kids, who let themselves into the house after school, make themselves an unhealthy snack, and wait until their parents get home from work. Looking at this simple change, it’s no surprise that children are becoming lazy, and no surprise again, lazy is the number one cause of obesity.

Dr. Dexter Canoy conducted a systematic review to answer the following questions: What are the effects of lifestyle interventions for the treatment of childhood obesity? What are the effects of surgical interventions for the treatment of childhood obesity? They resulted that obesity is the result of a long-term energy imbalance (laziness).

Conclusion 

It can be concluded, the obesity is the cause of most diabetes in children and obesity is caused by laziness. Being lazy causes people to eat bad food. This is both a direct causation and if you read my post backward, it could also be proven that reverse causation could be a possibility. Overall, children need to change their ways, get involved in sports and do something active in order for this epidemic to be fixed.

 

 

One thought on “Americas Fastest Growing Epidemic: Diabetes

  1. Samuel Sae Jong Lee

    Julia,

    Thank you for the post. First, I liked how the blog was very organized from top to bottom with bolded subheadings separating each paragraph. I felt that was a smart way to organize your thoughts and write efficiently. The blog itself was very informational about diabetes, the different types of diabetes, and the studies involving diabetes. However, I wish that you would go in more depth as to the why obesity is increasing in America and if it was correlated to diabetes. In your conclusion, you stated that “obesity is the cause of most diabetes in children and obesity is caused by laziness”. I felt that this conclusion was not very supported or justified in the blog and was more so a hasty conjecture. All in all, I thought the blog was a good start but there are certain areas of improvement that I hope you will implement in your next blog.

    Fellow Student,
    Sammy Lee

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