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The Steady Rise of Diabetes and What We Can Do About It

I’m willing to bet that most people know someone or have someone in their lives that has diabetes. There’s Diabetes Type I and Type II, but I’m focusing on Type II today. It affects so many people and their lives, even those who don’t have it, but have a close relative who does. BBC just came out with this article this morning:

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The world is facing an “unrelenting march” of diabetes which now affects nearly one in 11 adults, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

In a major report it warned cases had nearly quadrupled to 422 million in 2014 from 108 million in 1980.

High blood sugar levels are a major killer – linked to 3.7 million deaths around the world each year, it says.

How diabetes has taken its toll

422 million

adults were living with diabetes in 2014 – that’s

314 million

more than there were in 1980

  • 8.5% of adults worldwide has diabetes
  • 1.5 million people died as a result of diabetes in 2012
  • 2.2 million additional deaths were caused by higher-than-optimal blood glucose
  • 43% of these 3.7m people died before they were 70 years old
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