The Poorest people in the UK are more than twice as likely to have diabetes at any age than the average person, a charity has warned, and those with the condition who live in the most deprived homes are also twice as likely to develop complications, Diabetes UK said.Obesity, lack of exercise, poor diet and smoking are to blame, it added.
One public health expert said efforts to prevent and treat the disease should be targeted at the most vulnerable.
As of 2008, there were 2.5 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK.
Numbers have been climbing in recent years due to increased efforts to find people who were unaware they had the condition.
It has been predicted that by 2025, there will be more than four million people with diabetes in the UK.
The most common type is type 2 diabetes, which is generally associated with lifestyle factors, such as being overweight.
It is caused by the body not producing enough insulin or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly.
The report also found that women in England who live in homes with the lowest income are more than four times as likely to get diabetes as those who live in homes with the highest income.
And diabetes in Wales is almost twice as high in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived.
Douglas Smallwood, Diabetes UK chief executive, said action is needed to prevent a generation of people living in deprivation "ending up in an early grave".
Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, said the figures were not surprising as the risk factors for diabetes were very closely associated with deprivation and hard to tackle.
"We do need to target efforts at the most vulnerable."
He added that the national vascular screening programme which started in April and is still gearing up would help diagnose people and help them manage the illness.
"But we need to set up a proper call and recall system, we can't just wait for people to go to the GP, it has to be done in a more active way."
Good idea but, wouldn’t it be better for the Government to ensure that there is enough money for the “deprived”, and force the “Super” Markets to reduce prices, rather than spending billions on treatment?
Angus
Angus Dei on all and sundry
Angus Dei politico
1 comment:
Very dear to my heart is this one Angus and that which angers and infuriates.Diabetes is a disease of modern society brought about by diets that rely for far too much of our calories by carbohydrates. I do not just mean sugar, although we consume far too much of that both 'hidden' in foods we suspect of being free of it and in carbonated drinks.
I would vrenture to say that Diabetes causes obesity not the opposite. Insulin causes fat deposition when we consume more available glucose than we can immediately utilise as energy. Diabetics are simply those of us who have been doing this so long to exhaust the islets of the pancreas and we then become more and more hyperglycemic and usually insulin resistant. If we continue in this way we become extremely and often terminally ill.
This is displayed in the deprived sections of society because they heed the advice of so called healthcare advisors to cut out dietry fats which leave nothing else to eat except carbs and protien all of which have an insulin reaction. As they tend to eat volumes of cheap processed foods the poor are more at risk than am I, because I eat fats and protien and little in the way of carbs. Rich or poor we all respond in the same way but it is greater in poverty due to thier high consumption of cereals, cheap bread and sandwiches, all generally based on high carbs. Most of the organisations to which you refer do little to help. Encouraging as they do, diabetics to eat a balanced diet based around carbs, the very thing that caused the condition in the first place! That is why the prognosis for most type 2's is dire.
All these organisations have a vested interest in keeping us as we are when a diet is all that is needed to begin to approach normoglycemia and give that pancreas a break!
A sea change is needed but unlikely any more than of changing the NHS to a caring body of humanity.
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