The CDC recently provided information regarding the rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States by county.

The CDC map and accompanying article can be found here.

My first response was that rather than calling the Southeast the “Bible Belt” it should now be called the “Diabetes / Obesity Belt”

All jokes aside, the maps provided give yet another example of the massive public health problems that face our nation. For the record, at least one third of Americans are currently classified as obese

• Obesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and it is estimated that more than 20 million Americans are currently diabetic,
• One out of three people with diabetes do not even realize that they have the disease.
  

The combination of diabetes and obesity has lead to the term “Diabesity” as a description of what many call an epidemic within the Ameican healthcare crisis. The usual suspects implicated in the diabesity epidemic include sedentary lifestyles, ubiquitous junk food, the supersizing of meal portions, and “emotional eating” are just a few.

From a public health standpoint I like the term diabesity because it makes us focus on not only esthetic aspects of obesity but rather the additional health concerns raised by the epidemic. Such a focus allows us to move from dealing with simply a largely preventable lifestyle related disease, namely obesity, and a huge and expensive health crisis, namely type 2 diabetes.

A few more sobering facts:

• Eighty per cent of type 2 diabetics are obese.
  
• Glucose metabolism are often seen with other forms of metabolic dysfunction involving lipids, uric acid, urinary albumin, clotting, inflammatory and fertility factors
  
• Additional mechanical complications such as arthritis, sleep apnea, stress incontinence, are also major health concern in this subset of the population.
  

Now, take another look at the map above. Why do you think that diabetes and obesity should be connected to geography? The CDC report suggests some answers, however, as clinicians and scientists I feel it is important that we look for underlying causes regarding why these conditions affect certain portions of the population more than others.

FURTHER READING:  Diabesity: The Obesity-Diabetes Epidemic That Threatens America–And What We Must Do to Stop It by Francine R. Kaufman, M.D.

Posted via web from onyeije’s posterous