The China Study - T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Diabetes

TYPE 2 DIABETES, the most common form, often accompanies obesity. As we, as a nation, continue to gain weight, our rate of diabetes spirals out of control. In the eight years from 1990 to 1998, the incidence of diabe- tes increased 33%.1 Over 8% of American adults are diabetic, and over 150,000 young people have the disease. That translates to 16 million Americans. The scariest figure? One-third of those people with diabetes don't yet know that they have it.2
You know the situation is serious when our children, at the age of puberty, start falling prey to the form of diabetes usually reserved for adults over forty. One newspaper recently illustrated the epidemic with the story of a girl who weighed 350 pounds at the age of fifteen, had the "adult-onset" form of diabetes and was injecting insulin into her body three times a day.3
What is diabetes, why should we care about it and how do we stop it from happening to us?
TWO FACES OF THE SAME DEVIL
Almost all cases of diabetes are either Type 1 or Type 2. Type 1 develops in  children and adolescents, and thus is sometimes referred to as juve- nile-onset diabetes. This form accounts for 5% to 10% of all diabetes cases. Type 2, which accounts for 90% to 95% of all cases, used to occur primarily in adults age forty and up, and thus was called adult-onset diabetes.2 But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are Type 2 diabetes,4 the age-specific names are being dropped, and the two forms of diabetes are simply referred to as Type 1 and Type 2.
In both types, the disease begins with dysfunctional glucose metabo- lism. Normal metabolism goes like this:
• We eat food.
• The food is digested and the carbohydrate part is broken down
into simple sugars, much of which is glucose.
• Glucose (blood sugar) enters the blood, and insulin is produced by
the pancreas to manage its transport and distribution around the
body.
• Insulin, acting like an usher, opens doors for glucose into different
cells for a variety of purposes. Some of the glucose is converted to short-term energy for immediate cell use, and some is stored as long-term energy (fat) for later use.
As a person develops diabetes, this metabolic process collapses. Type 1 diabetics cannot produce adequate insulin because the insulin-pro- ducing cells of their pancreas have been destroyed. This is the result of the body attacking itself, making Type 1 diabetes an autoimmune disease. (Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases are discussed in chapter nine.) Type 2 diabetics can produce insulin, but the insulin doesn't do its job. This is called insulin resistance, which means that once the insulin starts "giving orders" to dispatch the blood sugar, the
body doesn't pay attention. The insulin is rendered ineffective, and the blood sugar is not metabolized properly.
Imagine your body as an airport, complete with vast parking areas. Each unit of your blood sugar is an individual traveler. After you eat, your blood sugar rises. In our analogy, then, that means lots of travel- ers would start to arrive at the airport. The people would drive in, park in a lot and walk to the stop where the shuttle bus is supposed to pick them up. As your blood sugar continues to rise, all the airport parking lots would fill to capacity, and all the people would congregate at the shuttle bus stops. The shuttle buses, of course, represent insulin. In the diabetic airport, unfortunately, there are all sorts of problems with the buses. In the Type 1 diabetic airport, the shuttle buses simply don't ex- ist. The only shuttle bus manufacturer in the known universe, Pancreas Company, was shut down. In the Type 2 diabetic airport, there are some shuttle buses, but they don't work very well.
In both cases, travelers never get to where they want to go. The airport system breaks down, and chaos ensues. In real life, this corre- sponds with a rise in blood sugar to dangerous levels. In fact, diabetes is diagnosed by the observation of elevated blood sugar levels, or its "spillage" into urine.
What are the long-term health risks of glucose metabolism being disrupted? Here's a summary, taken from a report from the Centers for Disease Control:
Diabetes Complications
Heart Disease
• 2-4 times the risk of death from heart disease.
Stroke
• 2-4 times the risk of stroke.
High Blood Pressure
• Over 70% of people with diabetes have high blood pressure.
Blindness
• Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in adults.
Kidney Disease
• Diabetes is the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease.
• Over 100,000 diabetics underwent dialysis or kidney trans-
plantation in 1999.
Nervous System Disease
• 60% to 70% of diabetics suffer mild to severe nervous system damage.
Amputation
• Over 60% of all lower limb amputations occur with diabet- ics.
Dental Disease
• Increasedfrequencyandseverityofgumdiseasethatcanlead to tooth loss.
Pregnancy Complications
Increased Susceptibility to Other Illnesses Death
Modern drugs and surgery offer no cure for diabetics. At best, current drugs allow diabetics to maintain a reasonably functional lifestyle, but these drugs will never treat the cause of the disease. As a consequence, diabetics face a lifetime of drugs and medications, making diabetes an enormously costly disease. The economic toll of diabetes in the u.s.: over $130 billion a year.2
But there is hope. In fact, there is much more than hope. The food we eat has enormous influence over this disease. The right diet not only prevents but also treats diabetes. What, then, is the "right" diet? You can probably guess what I'm going to say, but let the research speak for itself.
NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T
Like most chronic diseases , diabetes shows up more often in some parts of the world than in others. This has been known for a hundred years. It has also been well documented that those populations with low rates of diabetes eat different diets than those populations with high rates of diabetes. But is that just a coincidence, or is there something else at work?