November is Diabetes Awareness Month
With nearly 26 million children and adults in American living with diabetes, and another 79 million at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes, the disease is taking a devastating physical, emotional and financial toll on our country. Yet, most Americans don’t consider diabetes a serious matter. They feel it is someone else’s responsibility; someone else’s problem.

Recent numbers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paint a desperate situation of where we are at, and where we are headed:

• Every 17 seconds, someone is diagnosed with diabetes
• Diabetes kills more people each year than breast cancer and AIDS combined
• Recent estimates project that as many as 1 in 3 American adults will have diabetes in 2050 unless we take steps to Stop Diabetes

Could you have diabetes and not know it?
The following article was written by Sophie Ramsey, patient editor, BMJ Group, and appeared in the Blogs Health section of the ConsumerReportsHealth.org Website on February 12, 2009.

An estimated 40 percent of adults with diabetes don't know they have it.

Here's a statistic that bears repeating: an estimated 40 percent of adults with diabetes don't know they have it. That's 4 in 10 people with the disease who are not getting treatment that could prolong their life and protect them from many serious health problems, such as blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart disease, and stroke. Wow.

This estimate comes from a new study by researchers with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Researchers used two tests to accurately gauge the blood sugar levels of more than 2,200 people in a large study on health and nutrition. (Most other studies have used only one test, which may not detect as many cases.) In the study, nearly 13 percent of adults age 20 and older had diabetes, and 40 percent of them had not been diagnosed. Virtually all those undiagnosed had type 2 diabetes, which usually starts later in life and is more common in people who are obese.

Diabetes was especially widespread among seniors, affecting nearly one-third of people 65 and older. Researchers also found that an additional 30 percent of adults had pre-diabetes, which means their blood sugar was high but not yet in the diabetes range. People with pre-diabetes are at increased risk of getting diabetes as well as having heart attacks and strokes.

So could you have diabetes and not know it? Here are some common symptoms of the disease:

• Needing to urinate more often
• Feeling very thirsty
• Feeling very hungry or tired
• Losing weight

But not everyone gets these symptoms, and people with pre-diabetes often don't get any. This is why testing blood sugar levels can be so important. Experts say everyone over age 45 should be tested. You should also ask your doctor about testing if you have risk factors for diabetes and pre-diabetes. These include:

• Being a member of a high-risk group (for example, African American, Hispanic/Latino American, American Indian and Alaskan Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander)
• Having high blood pressure
• Having low HDL cholesterol or high triglycerides
• Having developed diabetes during pregnancy (gestational diabetes)
• Having polycystic ovary syndrome
• Having acanthosis nigricans (dark, thickened skin around you neck or armpits)