Diabetes is becoming a national health "emergency"

[Northerner]

Diabetes is becoming a “national health emergency”, a charity has warned as figures suggest that hundreds of people are diagnosed with the condition every day in the UK.

Diabetes UK said that more than 280,000 people a year are diagnosed with diabetes – the equivalent to the population of Newcastle.

Each day 738 people are told that they have type 2 diabetes – which is linked to being overweight – and 30 are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes – which is not linked to weight.

About 3.8 million people in the UK now have the condition and about 35% of the population have borderline diabetes.

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...th-emergency/story-21335365-detail/story.html

 

[The Rockabilly Red]

I wish Diabetes UK would stop quoting "which is linked to being overweight". They would be just as valid saying it's linked to being over 40, or being Asian. But I guess we're not allowed to say that are we.

 

[Northerner]

I wish Diabetes UK would stop quoting "which is linked to being overweight". They would be just as valid saying it's linked to being over 40, or being Asian. But I guess we're not allowed to say that are we.

Totally agree, it reinforces in the public's mind that all diabetes is entirely due to excessive weight whereas this is far from the case.

 

[robert@fm]

Well, technically T2 is "linked" to being overweight; the problem is that most people (especially tabloid journalists) fail to understand that correlation is not causation, and inflate the link to "obesity causes T2" — which to my mind is a textbook example of the cum hoc fallacy. 🙄 My case for one is such that I'm sure that for me, either T2 caused obesity or (more likely) they were both caused by metabolic syndrome.