By Dean L. Jones, C.P.M.
Diabetes can lead to requiring amputations, blindness, heart attack, kidney failure, stroke, and staggeringly the rate of acquiring diabetes has tripled in the last ten years, with a new case diagnosed every seven minutes. The statistics of known diabetic sufferers is beyond alarming and there are dialysis centers throughout the country doing business to help people with kidney failure survive.
Out of curiosity, I utilized an online dialysis center location finder with 90220 as the zip code location base that gave results showing more than 32 centers within a 7-mile radius. Relatively the same number of 30 centers within a 7-mile radius came up using 90210 as the base location. Alternatively to going through dialysis, obtaining a kidney transplant is expensive and complicated to get a compatible match. Whereby, whether if you are financially well-off or not it is difficult to qualify for a kidney transplant.
For better, lives are being prolonged from medical improvement starting with the first outpatient dialysis center that opened in the basement of a Swedish hospital on January 1, 1962. For worse, Medicare alone is paying $15 billion a year for outpatient dialysis support toward end-stage renal disease (ESRD). This gives rise just how bad this situation is and control over it will help save future generations.
Kidneys are extremely important to filter/remove waste products in the blood to prevent illnesses and chronic renal failure that can develop over months and years. The most common causes of chronic renal failure is poorly controlled diabetes, poorly controlled high blood pressure, and chronic glomerulonephritis (improperly kidney filtering of waste/fluids from the blood). Also, some medications are very toxic to the kidney, including nonsteroidal and anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen.
What people grapple with is if eating too much sugar actually causes the diabetes disease. To get the energy we need to survive, our body converts some of the food we eat into sugars, also known as glucose. At the same time, our pancreas organ is creating a hormone called insulin that works to bind cells in order to absorb that glucose. Unfortunately, diabetics do not produce enough insulin, or that insulin does not work properly preventing the cells to bind and wrongly causing the glucose to stay in the blood and not into the cells properly where it is needed to provide energy for the body.
A non-diabetic person overindulging on processed sugar in itself possibly will not cause diabetes as the pancreas organ will produce enough insulin to cope with the high glucose levels and keep the blood sugar normal. Although, too much processed sugar will over work the pancreas and send insulin levels through the roof. Accordingly, continually eating processed sugary products will cause the body to breakdown and become insulin resistant, in short, bringing on Type 2 diabetes―so stay Sugar Alert!
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones, Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributes his view on health attributes of packaged foods & beverages.
