Diabetes is a Bonafide Epidemic
New Yorker Michael Ferdinand used to play hockey, football and basketball, but now his body is being quietly ruined by the city’s biggest health challenge of the 21st Century: diabetes.
It is a disease that the health department is calling a bonafide epidemic.
In East Harlem alone, one in five has the disease.
It used to attack mainly the elderly, but now it is occurring frequently among young children and every age in between.
Mercilessly, diabetes disproportionately occurs within the impoverished black and Hispanic communities of New York.
It tends to run in the family and the key to preventing it from sending blood-sugar levels soaring out of control is diet and exercise.
Health commissioner Dr Thomas Frieden says that two things have changed fundamentally in recent years.
“It’s harder to get physical activity, and it’s easier to eat large numbers of calories. That balance is what drives this epidemic.”
It is estimated that one in three children born today in the US is going to end up with diabetes.
Dr Frieden believes that only massive preventive action now will save future generations of New Yorkers from growing up as a dysfunctional burden to their families and their city.
Filed under Diabetes
