Friday, March 29, 2024

Decline in New Diagnoses of Diabetes

December 2, 2015 by  
Filed under Featured

 

chart showing a decline in diagnoses of diabetes

Diabetes is on the decline. Since 1990 the amount of new cases of diabetes diagnosed every year has been going up. New statistical evidence is showing a significant decrease from 1.7 million new diagnoses in 2010 down to 1.4 million in 2014.

There are many potential factors that can be attributed to the decline in new diagnoses. For decades, overall health, eating habits, exercise, and obesity rates had been on the decline. Recently, however, there have been significant advances. Soda consumption has decreased by a quarter since 1990. Americans are increasing their exercise as well. In 2000, the CDC estimated that only 30% of the population was getting enough exercise. In 2013 that percentage rose to 55% of adults. Children are also seeing a significant increase. Caloric intake in adults and children have dropped by a small margin. This is considered to be a good step in the right direction, however to impact overall health, more needs to be done. Obesity rates, considered a major risk factor in diabetes, have remained flat. The hope is that with more education, all of these numbers will continue to improve.

Education is an important factor in diabetes prevention. Many schools, cities, states, and the Federal government have implemented education programs to teach people about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. In some poor uneducated areas of the country, people do not have access to the health care that they need, and were simply never taught about it. Typically in poorer communities, things like nutrition, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and diabetes were not even talked about. Awareness campaigns have been very successful at getting the information about these topics to everyone in the country. Those are not the only areas of education that need to be improved though. The level of education a person receives is also an important factor. Well educated people have seen the biggest drop in diabetes. People with a high school degree have see a slight decline in diabetes diagnoses, and people without a high school education have remained fairly stagnant.

chart showing a decline in diabetes diagnoses considering education level

The decrease in new diagnoses of diabetes is definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully, with more education about the importance of diet, exercise, and overall health; the numbers of new diagnoses of diabetes will continue to decline.

[hupso]

Comments are closed.