The impact of globesity will inevitably spell financial ruin for our nation

 The first and most powerful impact that this trend will produce is a dramatic rise in the incidence of diabetes in our population. There are two types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is typically detected during childhood and is seen in people who are genetically predisposed to the disease. Type 2 diabetes is not necessarily genetically linked. It usually has a late onset in adulthood and is directly linked to diet and obesity. Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes have disastrous effects upon our organs and create the same malevolent and disastrous health problems.

A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) co-authored by Jing Wang, MPH, and Edward W. Gregg, PhD, has concluded that every year since 1990 the incidence of type II diabetes has increased by 5% in America. In other words, today there are 90% more people suffering from the lethal and debilitating disease than in 1990, and the trend is not diminishing.

The American Diabetes Association highlights these CDC findings in Diabetes News. Linda S. Geiss, MA, Chief of Diabetes Surveillance, Diabetes Program, Division of Diabetes Translation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated, “The growth in diabetes prevalence and incidence accelerated in the early 1990’s and this acceleration remains unabated…It is likely tied to the growth in obesity in this country, and if we are going to stem the growing burden of diabetes, we must improve our prevention efforts.”


Today 23.6 million Americans, or 7.8% of the population, have diabetes. Even more alarming, 54 million Americans have pre-diabetes, an abnormally high level of elevated blood sugar, which is a pre-cursor to diabetes. Worse yet, some 6 million Americans do not even know that they have pre-diabetes because the disease has not yet become symptomatic enough. This means that almost one third of all Americans are now either diabetics or pre-diabetics, and many of them do not know it.

The medical costs directly attributed to diabetes are a staggering 116 billion dollars per year. If we compute the associated costs of wages not earned and the lack of productivity due to absenteeism, the total cost to the economy is 174 billion dollars. If diabetes did not exist, in just a few years’ time the savings would totally pay for our entire national debt. If this trend continues unchecked, it will be the perfect storm that shall surely sink our economy, not to mention the personal tragedies and heartaches that the disease will bring to millions of families. It is a burgeoning disaster of the first magnitude that can no longer be ignored.