Editorials

By their very nature, we Americans are a people of causes, especially with our health. We gravitate to the sexy, the gripping tale of human frailty. We are moved to participate and rally around the undeniable need to seek cures for front-page diseases that kill.

We champion the urgency to find a cure for cancer, perhaps the most evil of man’s ailments. We preach the need for heart health — screening, physical fitness, anti-smoking campaigns, proper diet — through the efforts of the American Heart Association. Those diseases motivate us to change our lifestyles and raise money for research that, in cancer’s case, might one day lead to a cure.

Unfortunately, we often ignore diabetes, one of man’s deadliest conditions. And in doing so, we are making a horrible, misguided mistake.

It’s past time that Americans — and particularly Alabamians, who have one of the nation’s highest rates of diabetes — move this disease to the top of our health concerns. We must work diligently to combat a disease that’s stricken 16 million Americans, many of whom endure its painful, debilitating effects — some of which could be lessened with adequate and timely treatment.

November is National Diabetes Month, and today is World Diabetes Day. It’s the perfect moment to rededicate our efforts and treat diabetes as we do cancer and heart attacks — as a public health crisis that needs our attention.

The statistics are grim and worsening. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System says more than 400,000 adults in Alabama suffer from diabetes and that our growth rate of new cases is 30 percent higher than the national average. We’re among the nation’s unhealthiest states, with the nation’s second-worst rate of obesity — a key factor in diabetes screening — and a black population with a frighteningly high rate of the disease.

Nationally, the statistics are no better. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 percent of the deaths related to diabetes are caused by either heart attacks or strokes; diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults below the age of 74; and an inventory of other issues — pregnancy complications, kidney disease, non-traumatic amputations, dental disease — only makes diabetes an appalling threat to Americans’ well-being.

That the disease has a catastrophic effect on our state, and our nation, is undeniable.

Diabetes’ problem is its normalcy; it does not often excite the masses to action. There is no Relay for Life for diabetes. Many of its symptoms don’t automatically cause people to alter their lifestyle and take on a healthy diet as do cancer and heart disease. And that’s a huge problem.

We must renew our commitment to diabetes education, to the imperative need to fight obesity and maintain a proper diet that includes ample fruits and vegetables. To think diabetes isn’t a silent killer is a monumental blunder. The statistics, grim as they are, are proof.

Diabetes facts

• 16 million Americans have diabetes and 5 million of those do not know they have it.

• By 2015, it is projected that 225 million people worldwide will have this disease.

• Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death for Alabamians.

• Diabetes is the leading cause of adult blindness in the country.

• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure in the country.

• Diabetes is the leading cause of non-traumatic amputations in the country.

• People with diabetes are at the same risk for heart attacks as people who have already suffered a heart attack.