“Diabetes represents a major and growing challenge to the health and economy of our nation ,” warns a 2012 report, Diabetes: The Silent Pandemic and Its Impact on Australia (from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute with input from Diabetes Australia and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, JDRF).
Obesity, intimately related to diabetes, generates even more concern. Australia’s population is 23,707,813. Of that number, 14 million, more than 60% of the population, are overweight or obese.
In addition to the human cost of diabetes in pain, suffering and early death (with unmanaged Type II diabetes resulting in an approximately 15 year shorter life expectancy), diabetes places a tremendous financial burden on society:
280 Australians develop diabetes every day. That’s one person every five minutes
Around 1.7 million Australians have diabetes. This includes all types of diagnosed diabetes (1.2 million known and registered) as well as silent, undiagnosed type 2 diabetes (up to 500,000 estimated)
Total annual cost impact of diabetes in Australia estimated at $14.6 billion
“If diabetes continues to rise at the current rates, up to 3 million Australians over the age of 25 years will have diabetes by the year 2025.” 3 million out of 24,000,000 with diabetes makes potentially 12.5% of the population diabetic!
And this doesn’t even count those who are at risk and are beginning to see the effects of the disease due to excess weight or erratic blood sugar levels. “If weight gain continues at current levels, by 2025, close to 80% of all Australian adults and a third of all children will be overweight or obese.” Today, Australia is one of the fattest nations in the developed world with a number that has more than doubled in the last 20 years.
A world-wide health crisis, noted by both the U.N. and the E.U., is particularly acute in Australia, and even more acute among indigenous than among non-indigenous Australians: “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have the fourth highest rate of Type 2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, or NIDDM) in the world and are 1.9 times as likely as non-indigenous Australians to be obese.”
Australian society is at risk with the health and financial burdens of this pandemic. While obesity and diabetes may have complex social, cultural, economic, political and commercial roots, there is general agreement that diabetes is a lifestyle problem, and lifestyle changes, specifically better diet and more exercise, will prevent and manage it.
With regard to diet, Dr. Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, places the blame squarely on runaway consumption of sugar in the modern world, not only sugar we add to food ourselves but sugars present in processed foods. These sugars are hidden under more than fifty different names.
The problem compounds when we remove natural fiber, which modulates the impact of sugar in our bodies, from food. In addition, over fifty years, physicians have mistakenly told their patients that fat, which also modulates the impact of sugar, is the problem, resulting in a food industry that pumps denatured foods full of sugars to replace the flavor of fat.
We don’t want to hear it, but the urgency of the problem demands urgent solutions. Health coaching for diabetics will provide individualized guidance to replace the sugar and processed foods in your diet with whole, real foods with all their fat and fiber, foods that nourished us for millennia. It will help you develop and stay with an exercise program scientifically designed to work together with your diet to manage your weight and your diabetes or to prevent you becoming a statistic. We can perform tests to monitor your situation, help you see your progress toward your goals and act as an accountability partner.
Please contact us today if you are diabetic or at risk of developing diabetes. For that matter, everyone should exercise daily and “eat like a diabetic” as a preventive measure. Let’s be partners in creating your path back to natural good health and extending your years of enjoying your family and friends and contributing to your community.