THE BASIC STATISTICS REGARDING DIABETES Just how big a problem is diabetes in the United States and probably in other developed countries as well? It’s a huge problem, as you might be discovering in this audiobook already, and it is a problem that is increasing in incidence as the people in our nations become fatter and more sedentary. More than seven million people alone out of the 30 million people total do not even know they have it, even though they are at just as great
a risk for complications as those who know they have it. About a fourth of all people over the age of 65 years have diabetes. Almost all of these have type 2 diabetes, partly because type 1 diabetics often don’t even live that long unless they are aggressively treated. More than 1.5 million new cases of diabetes are identified in the United States each year, mostly because of testing done at the doctor’s
office when they have no symptoms of the disease. Diabetes is considered the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, although this number is probably artificially low because patients with diabetes often die of diabetic-induced complications listed on their death certificate as the main cause of death without diabetes being mentioned on the death certificate. In 2015 alone, researchers identified nearly 80,000 death certificates listing diabetes as the major cause of death. Three times as many or about 250,000 death certificates included diabetes as a factor that contributed to the person’s death. As we’ve already mentioned, diabetes is a risk factor for other diseases that are more deadly than dying from high
blood sugar by itself. Young people have a chance of either type of diabetes. About 190,000 people under the age of 20 in the United States have known diabetes, which is only one-fourth of one percent of young people. That number, however, is expected to rise in the coming years—not because the incidence of type 1 diabetes is going up but because of higher numbers of type 2 diabetics being discovered. Just ten years ago, about 17,900 juveniles
in America had type 1 diabetes, while 5300 had type 2 diabetes.
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