I'll quit smoking after I get cancer

Why would you quit until you found out you had the big C? After all "I know people that smoked all their lives and never got cancer".

Pretty stupid, huh?

Why would you lose weight, reduce your carbohydrate intake and exercise more until you were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (aka adult onset diabetes)?

Same reason ... at that point it is too late. By the time you are actually diagnosed with diabetes your

body has been battling high levels of glucose ("blood sugar") for years. Your body has been making an heroic effort to deal with all that excess glucose (thanks to the "standard American diet") ... your pancreas cranking out more and more insulin, your liver converting excess glucose into glycogen for future use and converting excess carbs, lipids and proteins into fat also for use at a future point in time. A great system designed to allow us to survive periods of food scarcity by storing energy which could then be drawn upon in times of famine. Don't know about you but where I live we need not fear food scarcity ... there is at least one fast food restaurant on every corner. At some point your body may just decide that it is done dealing with all that excess glucose and give up and at that point you may notice that you are unusually thirsty and you pee a lot ... or an unusually intense hunger ... or an unexplained weight loss ... or that you are tired and irritable ... or your vision is blurry ... or that sores heal slowly. So, you go to the doctor at this point and they check your blood glucose level and voila! you have diabetes!

Consider the following:
-As 2010 there were 285,000,000 people with type 2 diabetes compared to about 30,000,000 in 1985
-Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death and can lead to permanent disability and poor health. People with diabetes can experience numerous serious and deadly complications, including heart disease and stroke, blindness, chronic kidney disease, and amputations.
-The risk for stroke is 2 to 4 times higher among people with diabetes. Adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates about 2 to 4 times higher than adults without diabetes.
-Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults aged 20–74 years.
-Diabetes is also the leading cause of kidney failure, accounting for 44% of new cases in 2008.
-More than 60% of leg and foot amputations not related to accidents and injuries were performed on people with diabetes. In 2006, that amounted to 65,700 amputations.

And just in case you think that once you are diagnosed you go on a diet and "take insulin" or some other miracle drug and you're okay ... sorry, not the way it works. THERE IS NO CURE FOR DIABETES.

So next time you see someone smoking and think, "what a moron" ... or the next time you slather on SPF 'whatever' before going in the sun (you are way more likely to get diabetes than skin cancer) ... I want you to think about this post. (especially if you have any relatives with type 2 diabetes ... like all my kin)

type 2 diabetes ... not just for grown-ups any more
simple steps to preventing diabetes
risk test