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Wednesday, September 19, 2018 (HealthDay News) – One in seven Americans has diabetes, and many do not even know that they have blood sugar, according to a new report.
According to the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, 14% of American adults have diabetes – 10% know it and more than 4% are undiagnosed.
"Diabetes remains a chronic health problem in this country, affecting some 30 million people," said lead researcher Mark Eberhardt, an epidemiologist with CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
A number of factors may be responsible for the increase in diabetes, he said. This includes the aging of the population, because diabetes strikes older people more often.
In addition, the epidemic of obesity is also causing the growing number of people with diabetes, said Eberhardt.
People need to be tested for diabetes, even if they think they do not have one, he says. Data showed that one-third of the study participants did not think they had diabetes, but tests showed that they did, Eberhardt said.
According to the report, nearly 16% of men have diabetes and about 12% of women. In addition, the probability of developing diabetes, diagnosed or not, increases with age.
In terms of population, diabetes is more common among Hispanics (20%) and Blacks (18%) than among Whites (12%).
Overweight and obesity are also more likely to develop diabetes, the researchers found. Only 6% of underweight or normal weight adults had the disease, while 12% of overweight adults and 21% of obese adults had it.
While diabetes treatment is available, Eberhardt said the public health goal should be to take action to prevent the disease. "Sometimes prevention is the best treatment," he said.
For this study, researchers used data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, expressed his frustration at the lack of progress in the fight against the diabetes epidemic.
"We have to stop talking and start walking," he said. Diabetes prevention begins with healthy lifestyle choices. These include a healthy diet and a lot of exercise.
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